She was glad that the rain lashed hard to distract her, as it swept in from the nearby sea. Janie was forced to bend against the wind as she got closer to the ramshackle buildings of the neighbouring farm. She thought she could hear the rattle of a Land Rover engine over to her left, approaching the cottage, but that wasn’t so unusual. The road was accessed by all the nearby fields and was the only route to town from the sea.
She took the short cut into the old farm by scrambling over the broken fence beside the pig sheds, and landed up to her ankles in thick mud. She had to tug her knee with both hands to get her foot out and plant it on the concrete yard. Near the farmhouse a couple of wheelbarrows had been left, and a bright yellow digger was parked with its claws resting against what used to be the old dairy. But there was no sign of life.
Janie had no desire to inspect the rest of the farm tonight, although as kids she, Ben and Jack would have been unable to resist clambering all over the abandoned digger, trying to start it up. She glanced over to the other side of the yard and sure enough there was a pile of logs, just as she remembered, stacked tight under the eaves of the biggest barn so that most of them were still dry. She looked around. The whole place really was falling down, and was creepy in the dark wet evening light, even without the ancient farmer with his squint and missing teeth jumping out at her. She hurried over to the logs and stretched until she could reach to pull the top ones off the pile, and chucked them into her basket.
‘What do you think you’re doing?’
Janie straightened so sharply that she cracked her head hard against a metal rafter, knocking the hood over her eyes and dropping a log on her toe. Someone equally hooded and dripping wet had materialised round the corner of the barn and was standing a couple of feet away. She could barely see through the curtain of raindrops, but he was extremely tall, extremely broad, and extremely armed with a shovel.
‘Nothing. Well, alright, I’m looking for logs,’ Janie croaked, hopping about and biting back yelps of pain. ‘We’re cold in our cottage and I want to make a fire. There’s nobody here to mind.’
‘Oh, but there is. Me.’
The figure stepped closer and Janie dodged against the wall. The man wore a tweed cap under the hood of his jacket, which he tipped up to take a better look at her. All Janie could see was an unshaven chin, a grimly set mouth, and a pair of black eyes that glinted behind a pair of understated tortoiseshell spectacles. The two soaked figures glared at each other for a moment.
‘I thought you were a bloke, until you started speaking,’ he said.
‘Not this time.’
‘So I’ll ask you again: what do you think you’re doing?’
‘I thought the place was sold, thought the old man had gone,’ Janie muttered, rubbing her head to try and remove the stars that danced in front of her eyes. ‘I didn’t think anyone would be here. The logs will only get wet if they’re not used.’
‘It has been sold, and the old man died a while ago. The new owner thought he was buying an old farm in the quietest corner of England he could find, and he’d be extremely pissed off if he thought thieves were at work the minute he takes possession.’
‘He’s not here, is he, and we’re only talking about a couple of old logs.’ Her head was banging painfully, and she started to sway.
‘Are you all right? I can see a cut,’ the farmer said, sounding suddenly concerned. He put one hand on the clapboard wall beside her and leaned forwards to examine her forehead. He raised his other hand towards her face, and Janie flinched, knocking the hood off her head.
‘Relax! Jesus, a guilty conscience, or what? I just want to take a look.’
‘What are you, a paramedic as well as a poacher?’ Janie asked.
‘As it happens, I do know what I’m doing. Now look, you’re bleeding,’ he said. He turned his hands inside out like a conjuror to show that there was no weapon, then lifted her wet hair off her forehead. ‘Not much, but it’s trickling from your scalp, just here.’
He held out the tip of his finger, and they both stared at the blood.
‘Come in here. It’s the only place with a roof,’ he said, guiding her backwards into the barn. He propped the door shut with his shovel.
Outside, the wind ripped at pieces of tarpaulin and loose sheets of corrugated iron, but this corner of the barn was sheltered and the straw was dry. Janie sat down on a hay bale and bent her head between her knees for a moment. She’d never been good with blood. The sight of it made her sweat. Still with her eyes closed, she tugged off her drenched coat and shook her hair in wet ropes down her back.
‘I was rude,’ she said into the floor. ‘If we’re going to be closeted away in here until the rain stops, I should say I’m sorry. But I wasn’t expecting to bump into anyone. It’s been derelict up here for years.’
‘I know. It’s going to take a lot of work to sort this place out. I’m sorry, too, for alarming you.’ He tried the light switch, but nothing happened. Then she heard his feet rustling through the straw. The dry scent of old hay wafted into her nostrils. He stopped. ‘The natural light’s not very good, but I wonder if there’s something familiar about you.’
His voice was right up by her face, tickling her ear. The hay bale wobbled as he sat down next to her.
‘What?’
Janie lifted her head. It felt better. She felt better. This was the first moment since Sally’s descent on the cottage with her fizzing urban energy and her teasing, tormenting tales, that Janie had felt some calm. The heat was still there, resting in her veins, but it made her limbs languid. She was so calm that she was pinned to her hay bale like a butterfly.
‘That dark-red hair of yours, colour of claret. I’ve seen hair like this before. Never got close enough to smell it, though, in the old days. Tell me, what is that smell? Rain, mixed with nervous female heat and what? Marigolds?’
Janie’s mouth dropped open. In the dull light his specs were like blank screens. Behind them she could just make out his eyes, fixed like beads.
‘How would you know that?’ she asked. ‘As it happens, you’re exactly right. It’s my shampoo. It has marigolds in it.’
‘I told you. It’s either the smell or the colour that’s familiar. And so are you, though I can’t put a finger on it yet.’
‘You’re mistaken. I’m not from round here.’
‘Nor am I, but you knew this farm was derelict.’
‘We used to visit, and play around here as kids. My cousin and his friend. We used to think old Maddock and his sons were evil trolls. They used to chase us with their pitchforks. Once the whole tribe came after us with a gun.’
‘I don’t blame him,’ said the stranger. ‘You were probably ruining the harvest and frightening the livestock.’
‘Yes, we were pains in the arse, but nobody could say I was frightening the livestock today.’
‘You frightened me.’
Janie laughed. He smiled back, his glasses glinting. He slid off the bale and squatted down in front of her, then balanced his hands on either side of her thighs. His oilskin jacket creaked across his shoulders as he sniffed at her again like a gun dog.
‘I ought to call you Marigold,’ he said.
‘And I ought to call it a day,’ replied Janie, swallowing her laughter and pulling back. She glanced towards the door, where the rain was bucketing down. There was no light out there, not even a sickle moon. She had no idea what time it was.
‘You can’t, not yet, you have been injured. Head injuries need rest, and relaxation.’
‘Head injury? It’s a tiny cut from a rafter!’ protested Janie.
‘A rusting metal rafter. You can’t be too careful. And this storm is doing nothing to clear the air, is it?’ The stranger wiped his hand across his face. ‘If anything, it’s getting hotter in here.’
Still staring at her, he pulled his heavy jacket off, taking the tweed cap with it, and letting everything fall in a wet heap behind him. He looked younger without the ‘Farmer Giles’ outfit;
not much older than her, in fact. He wore a faded blue T-shirt, so old and loose that she could see the ropes of muscle in his deeply tanned neck and shoulders, and a pulse beating beneath the sinews. She wouldn’t mind sitting here, looking at his neck all day.
‘You see? You’re sweating,’ he said. ‘That makes two of us. I can’t think why it’s suddenly so hot in here. Not running a fever, I hope?’
He laid a hand across Janie’s forehead like a nurse. Her skin prickled up her neck as his face drew closer again. There was a ticking sensation just inside the opening of her pussy, a tiny muscle contracted the moment he touched her. What had Sally said about being in the taxi with Mastov? That all it took was one flick of his fingernail after months of dreary celibacy. This prickling all over her certainly wasn’t fear. She didn’t want to escape. She never wanted to move again.
The man’s damp hair stood up in dark tufts where the cap had ruffled it and she could see one black wisp slowly reshaping itself into a tight curl behind his ear as it dried.
‘I’m not ill, no,’ she said. ‘I just put too many clothes on when I came out. I forgot that it’s supposed to be July.’
‘Don’t normally need logs in July.’
‘It’s not normally so damned freezing in July. At least, it is in our cottage.’
He pulled his sleeves down his arms and Janie watched the material wrinkle on his skin. Before she could stop it her mind had burrowed under the shirt, wondering whether there were curls on his chest or down on his stomach, like there were on his head.
‘Stay here and get warm, then,’ he said. ‘Your cottage must be even more derelict than this place.’
‘I should go,’ she said, without making any attempt to move. But while she kept her eyes on his brown neck, her mind remained further down his body. Nothing could stop it, nothing could stop the insistent private twitching and aching inside her. She was mentally unbuttoning his jeans, seeing the wiry curls springing in a nest of hair round his resting, waiting prick.
They were level with each other, he still kneeling in front of her, she sitting on the hay bale, chests heaving under their damp summer clothes, and now Janie was wrestling with a ferocious urge to touch him. Her head felt fine now, apart from a slight throbbing where he’d said there was a cut. But she still wondered if she was seeing things. One moment she had been trudging through a field in the middle of a storm, head teeming with images of other people cavorting and having sex, starved of any experience to call her own, her own body fidgeting with that new, unwelcome hunger. The next minute she was being hustled into a dilapidated barn by a stranger who looked as if he might as easily ravish her as kill her. It was as though her restless state of mind had summoned him out of thin air, like an apparition.
The rain drummed, the wind whistled, and the heat radiated out of the stranger as he took a long strand of her hair, wound it round his fingers and rubbed it under his nose to sniff it. She could see her reflection: two miniature Janies in each lens of his glasses, with huge bug-eyes and tiny chins. Something in her memory stirred. She had stared into someone’s glasses like that before, years ago; seen that alarmed, wide-eyed reflection, and in that remembered scenario she had been sitting bolt upright in a barn full of straw, just like this.
‘I used to know someone with hair just like yours,’ said the man, as if he could read her mind. ‘Same colour, same smell. Do you mind that I’m touching it?’
He separated his fingers and let the strand of hair unwind and fall back against Janie’s breast. Instead of returning his hand to rest on the hay bale, or using it to lever himself upright so that they could both leave, his fingers tangled themselves under her hair. He started to slide his rough hands down her neck, lifting her wet hair away from the clammy skin, and stroking his fingertips where her pulse was hammering. Sparks of electricity seemed to crackle off her. He shifted very slightly back on his haunches, and held her away from him. He stared at her neck, her throat, down at her dark-red shirt. Janie followed his gaze. The shirt, like most of her clothes, was loose, but her march through the rain had made the fine linen cling to her, emphasising the twin curves of her breasts. The man slowly formed a smile as he took in the bulges of soft flesh, and Janie pushed her shoulders back so that the breasts were clearly outlined – two inviting mounds waiting to smother him. It was just as Sally had suggested – some lucky guy was going to press his face in there. And Janie’s tits, her whole body, had been tight with longing ever since the remark had been made.
‘All in one piece, doctor?’
The man’s fingers pressed harder into the dip at the base of Janie’s throat, causing her to catch her breath.
‘All very much in one piece. I was just checking you hadn’t hurt your neck as well from that bump. You’ll live.’
‘Not if you keep strangling me. I should go,’ Janie said again, tilting her head away from him. He had just appeared in the farmyard; crept up on her she thought. Perhaps he had been watching her. Perhaps he had been watching the cottage. He had big hands that were squeezing her neck, for God’s sake. They were in a deserted barn in the middle of a rainstorm and, even if she screamed, no one would hear her.
‘Of course you should,’ he answered. He took his hands away and rested them on his legs. Now her neck felt cold. ‘Although I’d rather you stayed. It’s damn lonely, this place. I’d quite forgotten. But I don’t normally wrap my hands round the necks of intruders. Then again, you don’t fit the usual description of an intruder.’
‘Which is?’
‘You know, balaclava, hairy, carrying a sawn-off shotgun … Male.’ She waited. ‘They’re not usually swathed in someone else’s anorak, smooth-skinned, carrying a couple of logs … Female. But still I have this weird feeling I’ve met you before.’
‘That must be the oldest line in the book.’
‘I know it sounds crass, OK. Then I guess you remind me of someone I used to know. And I think I remind you of someone. That’s the reason that you’re not afraid of me, as most people would be. You should be trying to run away. I’m pretty menacing, don’t you think? Especially when I catch people breaking the rules. I mean, you’ve seen my shovel.’
One of his front teeth overlapped the other very slightly, though the others were dead straight. His smile broadened, and the uneven teeth simply made the smile more attractive. His lips were red, and wet where his tongue ran across them while he waited for her to speak. She struggled to keep a straight face.
‘No, I’m not afraid of you. I’m just waiting for my chance. I’m not leaving without my logs.’ She didn’t want to say ‘I’m not running away because I’m horny as hell.’
‘You’re putting it on. You’re not a natural-born felon. So why so brazen?’
‘It’s concussion, probably, or too much wine. My friend and I have been carousing all afternoon.’ Janie raised her chin. ‘You probably recognise me because you spotted us arriving at the cottage over the field. Difficult to miss us, with all our bags and stuff.’
‘That’s not it. I only arrived here myself this afternoon, and I’ve been up here all that time. Too wet to go out spying on the neighbours. Didn’t even know I had neighbours.’
‘Well, you’re wrong about one thing. I haven’t a clue who you are. All I know is that you’re not the cross-eyed Maddock, which is a relief. We both know what I was doing here, but what were you doing, prowling about in the rain as if you own the place?’
She gripped the hay bale, but it scratched her hands. Too much conversation. Her horny mood was ebbing. Sally would be ashamed of her. Ensconced in a lovely warm barn, inches away from a red-blooded male, and talking about head injuries and cross-eyed farmers instead of getting down to some serious seduction? Sally would have had his trousers down by now. But then again, Sally wasn’t here, was she?
Her other voice told her that talking was a good thing. This was a man-free holiday, she remembered. Anyway, Janie wouldn’t know how to set about getting his trousers off. On the other hand, if she di
dn’t keep talking she might just grab him and start shouting, ‘My friend says I’m frustrated. So fuck me!’
Shards of excitement jabbed at her again, daring her, urging her on. Different parts of her were desperate for him to carry on touching her, even if it was only on her neck. She was starving, she was frigid, and her cunt had closed up. Having felt him touch her once, her whole body was clamouring to feel one flick of his fingertips.
He was so close she could count every bristle pushing through the dark skin on his chin. She focused on his mouth.
‘I’m the four-eyed farmer, if you must know.’ He pushed his specs up his nose, putting on a sheepish expression. ‘And I do own the place.’
Janie tore her eyes away from his mouth. ‘And I’m Old Macdonald.’
‘Seriously, Miss Marigold. I’ve bought this farm. I should have told you at the beginning. So, you see, I’m allowed to be in this barn, because this is my barn, and those are my logs. Whereas you are a trespasser.’ He jabbed a finger towards her nose. ‘So it’s me who should be asking the questions.’
‘I thought it was all going to be pulled down.’
‘Once you’d nicked the logs?’
‘Look, I never dreamed anyone would actually want to live here.’
‘And I never dreamed it would have so much potential,’ he grinned, rubbing a hand through his hair. ‘Particularly with such a luscious new neighbour.’
‘Two – there’s two of us,’ she corrected him, mentally kicking herself as soon as she’d said it.
‘Two luscious neighbours, eh? I’ll be round for a cup of sugar, you can count on that. Two of you. What a bonus.’
‘Well, now that we’re neighbours, perhaps I should tell you my name,’ Janie offered.
‘If you did that, I’d have to punish you for trespassing, wouldn’t I?’ he said. ‘But then again, I don’t want you suing me for personal injury. Lord knows the entire farmyard is a health hazard.’
‘Best if we just remain anonymous, then,’ said Janie, ever the practical one.
Country Pleasures Page 5
