Lots of Love

by Unknown

  Ellen poked out her tongue at his retreating back, then headed inside with the bucket and splashed her face at the cold tap as she filled it, listening to Joni Mitchell starting up in the garden. Spurs had clearly deemed it a respectable hour to start the noise pollution – although to Ellen’s mind there was nothing as pure as Joni’s poetry and her sweet, cracked voice.

  The soggy piece of paper with its crumpled line from ‘The Last Time I Saw Richard’ still floated on the pool of slime left in the pond, and hidden below it was the horseshoe. Ellen wondered whether she could retrieve it without Spurs seeing.

  When she carried the bucket out, he was playing ball with Snorkel, the cigarette dangling between his lips.

  ‘She needs a walk.’ Ellen watched her exploding like a sprung coil after every throw.

  ‘So let’s take her.’

  ‘Dilly’s coming over,’ she reminded him ‘Why don’t I do it while you finish the windows?’

  ‘I want to come with you.’

  ‘You might miss Dilly.’

  Joni was singing about Christmas and longing for a river she could skate away on. Her timing wasn’t great. The only thin ice to skate on in steamy Oddlode was frosting Spurs’ eyes as he shook his head. ‘She’ll come at exactly the same time as yesterday. She’s a teenager. They calculate things like that carefully. She’ll have thought about me all night.’

  Ellen pulled back her chin and snorted at his arrogance. It prodded her to ask, ‘Did you lose your nerve when you broke your leg?’

  ‘No.’ He threw his cigarette butt into the clipped hedge. ‘What makes you say that?’

  ‘Yesterday you looked frightened when Dilly asked you to ride Otto.’

  ‘Oh – no, it wasn’t nerves. It was something she said.’

  ‘What?’

  ‘Doesn’t matter. Just a stupid thing from my past. Haunts me sometimes.’

  ‘So you weren’t frightened?’

  ‘No.’ He looked at her levelly. ‘Horses don’t frighten me.’

  ‘What does?’

  ‘You.’

  She snorted. ‘T’yeah.’

  ‘You’re frightened of me too.’

  ‘I’m not.’ She laughed. ‘You were the one who told me you couldn’t scare me to death because I was afraid of nothing.’

  ‘You remember everything I say. That’s scary for a start.’

  Caught left-footed, Ellen whistled for Snorkel. ‘Okay, let’s walk.’

  ‘Prove you’re not frightened.’

  She pulled at Snorkel’s ears. ‘How exactly?’

  ‘Get your car keys – we can pick up some bedding plants from the nursery while we’re out.’

  ‘Oh, that is so scary,’ she teased, glancing over her shoulder with one eye closed against the sun. ‘Bedding plants. Eek!’

  Reaching out, he touched her neck with the tips of his fingers, almost making her orbit the planet. ‘We have to get out of here.’

  Ellen was tempted to tell him to get lost, but somehow when Spurs bossed her about, it didn’t feel like being told what to do, lectured or talked down to – her usual fury triggers. It felt like an adventure.

  With Snorkel spinning excitedly behind the dog grille, they drove out of the village to the west, then turned right on to the Springlode lane, crossed the narrow bridge over the Odd then immediately climbed a high, winding hill towards Parson’s Ridge.

  Having followed Spurs’ directions, Ellen cast a look at the retreating village in her rear-view mirror. ‘This is the opposite direction to the nursery.’

  ‘We’ll go there on the way back. There’s a great walk up here.’

  ‘The bridleway,’ she said gesturing to the right where the track climbed through the fields parallel to the twisting lane. ‘We could have walked it from the cottage.’

  ‘It would have taken too long.’ He glanced at his watch impatiently. ‘Do you have cargo straps for the roof of this thing?’

  ‘In the back, yes.’ Was he planning to buy the entire contents of the nursery?

  He twisted round to look. ‘Where’s your kite?’

  ‘My what?’

  ‘Your ’chute. You said it was in the car.’

  Who remembered everything that was said now? Ellen wondered, with amusement, as a throwaway comment popped back into her head. ‘Under the seat. Why?’

  ‘Turn into the gateway here,’ Spurs instructed, and guided her down a long, narrow track that ran along the spine of the dragon, the views on either side breathtaking.

  They parked at the far side of a cracked field, under the shadow of a spindly coppice.

  ‘The locals call this Broken Back Wood,’ he told her, as they got out and freed Snorkel. ‘The hunt draw covert here seven or eight times a season – it’s full of fox – and at least once a year a rider breaks their back falling as they chase the pack down there.’ He pointed to where the land swept down into the valley, a three-mile, one-in-four terror run of steep, undulating fields separated by dense black hedges and thick dry-stone walls.

  Ellen shuddered. ‘Now you know why I don’t ride.’

  ‘Oh, it’s the best feeling in the world galloping from here.’ He laughed, did an about-turn and pointed to the more gentle slope down to the Foxrush valley. ‘That way, you can have an eight-mile run without crossing a road – can you imagine that? Horses have been known to drop dead of exhaustion.’

  Ellen looked at him sharply. ‘That’s hardly something to boast about. It’s sick.’

  ‘I agree. Why d’you think I left this place behind?’

  They turned and made their way cautiously down a steep path that led from the wood to a stile in a stone wall, beyond which the Lodes Valley spread out beneath them like a vast, deep green salad bowl, dusted with nutty villages.

  Standing on the stile was like standing on a diving-board high above a green sea. Spreading her arms wide and longing to jump, Ellen didn’t want to think about cruel bloodsport fanatics riding their horses to death across country. All she could think about was how she craved wings to fly high above it all, the wind rushing in her ears and blood gushing through her veins. ‘Where’s a parachute when you need one?’ She laughed.

  ‘In the back of the car,’ Spurs reminded her.

  ‘Sorry?’

  ‘Your ’chute – that you use for kite-surfing – it’s still in the car.’

  ‘So it is.’ She jumped off the stile and started out across a field of cows, which Snorkel was trying busily to round up.

  ‘Aren’t you going to use it, then?’ Spurs called after her, still standing on the other side of the stile.

  ‘Don’t be daft.’ She turned and walked backwards now. ‘It’s a surf kite – it wouldn’t work. There’s nothing to surf and no wind.’

  ‘Can’t you feel the wind now the storm’s moving in?’ he yelled, pointing at her hair. ‘Look.’

  Blonde wisps were being buffeted in a mounting breeze. Ellen carried on walking backwards, shaking her head – windblown hair and all. ‘It’s a stupid idea. Way too dangerous.’

  ‘You said you’d prove you weren’t frightened.’

  ‘I’m not, but I’m not going to jump this hill.’

  ‘I thought you used to base jump?’

  ‘Years ago – it’s totally different. There are tons of safety precautions. What are you trying to do? Kill meeeee-eeeeeeeaghhhhhhhh!’ Her ankle gave way as her foot landed in a rabbit hole and she tumbled backwards, rolling twenty yards down the slope before coming to a sticky halt.

  Eventually Spurs was looking down at her. ‘Are you planning on getting up?’

  ‘I could have broken my back,’ she snapped, aware that she had been lying down for rather a long time.

  ‘But you haven’t.’

  ‘No – I’ve, er, landed in a cowpat.’ Reluctantly, she sat up and peered over her shoulder. It was smeared all over the back of her T-shirt and reeked to high heaven. ‘Shit.’

  ‘Literally.’ Spurs offered her a hand up, pulling her with such str
ength that she practically landed in his arms.

  ‘Thanks.’ She stepped back hurriedly.

  ‘Here.’ He pulled his own T-shirt over his head and held it out. ‘Have this.’

  When she took it, she could feel the warmth of his body clinging to the folds.

  He smiled and waited.

  ‘Turn your back then,’ she muttered.

  ‘I have seen you change your top twice before,’ he reminded her, still smiling.

  ‘I wasn’t frightened of you then,’ she mocked.

  ‘Frightened of what?’

  ‘Fine.’ She pulled off the cowpat T-shirt, carefully to avoid getting the smelly mulch on her skin or hair, then threw it down before she dived into Spurs’ warm, soft replacement. ‘Happy?’ she demanded.

  His smile even wider now, he turned to look out across the valley. ‘If you’re too chicken, can I use your kite?’

  ‘Absolutely not – it’s specialist equipment. Besides, the harness would never fit you.’

  ‘Shame. At least I’ve got the balls to try.’

  ‘I haven’t got balls, remember.’

  ‘Oh, but you have.’ He looked at her again.

  ‘Are you insinuating that I am, in fact, a man in drag?’

  ‘Well, you’re a drag. Whether you’re a man or not – ouch!’ She’d clobbered him. ‘The tits look pretty real. Ouch!’ She’d clobbered him again.

  ‘Glad you like them.’ She sniffed, and stooped to pick up her T-shirt. ‘I had them done in Singapore. Bloody expensive. Call me Larry.’

  ‘Good to meet you, Larry. Have you been topped and tailed?’

  ‘Yes, the full op.’ She nodded sincerely. ‘I left my dick in South East Asia, along with my last basin of stubble.’

  ‘How romantic.’

  ‘I thought so.’ She set off back up the hill.

  ‘Where are you going, Larry?’ he called after her.

  ‘I thought I might fly a kite.’ Bugger. Ellen cursed herself as she walked. This is so stupid – why does he keep making me feel like this? Like I have to do the things I’ve always thought about in careless daydreams but which I know are crazy?

  Yet she was almost running now, planning the jump, guessing that the wind was just right to skim her low over the hedges and walls with minimal lift or drift. She’d never used her own kite this way before, but she’d seen some of the guys trying them off hills – and even cliffs – without coming to much harm. There’d been a few broken limbs admittedly – at least one concussion that she remembered. But they were far more reckless.

  When she reached the car, she pulled the ’chute and harness from the store beneath the back bench seat.

  ‘So you’re really going to do it?’ Spurs asked breathlessly, as he caught up.

  ‘Why not?’ She gathered the silk over one shoulder and handed him the harness. ‘Carry that.’

  He cast her a look that set her pulses thrumming like overwound metronomes and they set off back to the stile.

  ‘You really are, aren’t you?’ he asked, as they ran side by side.

  ‘No, I’m going to pretend right up until the last minute.’ She scanned the horizon for hazards.

  ‘You don’t have to.’

  ‘I want to.’ Anything to get away from you, she thought. Anything to get away from my attraction to you.

  They stumbled to a halt by the stile.

  Spurs scraped his hand through his hair, and drew a short breath. ‘If you do this, we might never really get to know each other.’

  Ellen admired his courage. She was being far more cowardly by flying away. ‘You were the one who suggested it.’ She dropped the silk on the far side of the stile, took her harness from him and stepped into it.

  He watched her. ‘I’ve changed my mind.’

  ‘Why?’

  ‘Because you might get my T-shirt dirty – ouch! Will you stop hitting me?’ He grabbed her arm, pulling her round to face him. ‘I don’t want to be held responsible if you get hurt.’

  ‘Spurs, I want to do it.’ She twisted away, tugging up the shoulder straps, then checking the fastenings. ‘I’m a grown-up. This is my decision and my risk. Forget you even suggested it – I was thinking about it before you said a word. Now I can’t not do it. It’s the way my head works.’

  The corners of his mouth twitched. ‘You too?’

  ‘Me too.’ She smiled as she realised something. ‘Me too.’

  Richard had never had X-factor. Richard was a daredevil and a sportsman and a man for whom calculated risks were daily mathematics, but he was also a coward. Cowardice, as he himself pointed out, saved lives – the bravest people in dangerous sports were usually the dead ones. Ellen had learned caution from him over the years, had looked over his shoulder while he did his sums, but it was not something that came naturally to her. She could work out any statistic she liked, except the risks to her own safety.

  She clipped on the ’chute, double-checked every fitting and accepted Spurs’ high five. The ultimate game was on.

  ‘Stand on the stile and hold the ’chute open from the top – that’s right.’ She watched him over her shoulder, thankful that he was so tall – his high reach lifting the kite wide open. ‘Now I’m going to run like smoke down this hill, and I’ll either fall flat on my face at the bottom – probably into another cowpat – or I’ll take off in time to clear that dry-stone wall. If it’s the latter then the car keys are in the ignition and you might need to collect me from somewhere . . . down . . . there.’ She tightened the strapping on her harness and gripped the kite toggles. ‘Okay. When I say, “Go”, let go.’ She held her face up to feel the breeze.

  ‘Good lu—’

  ‘Go! Go! Go! Get out of the way you bloody coooo-ooooooooooooooows!’

  The wind lifted her off the ground long before she had anticipated, and long before she’d gathered enough running speed to dictate her direction.

  Within seconds she was twenty feet in the air and whizzing left at a breakneck pace, high above a dozen surprised-looking cows and a barking Snorkel.

  ‘Bugger.’ Ellen dragged at the left toggle and looked around for power lines, pylons and trees as she was blown off course.

  She was swept another ten feet into the air by a sharp gust that almost upended the kite, and propelled her even faster in her journey in the wrong direction – rattling along the backbone of the ridge rather than into the valley.

  The tiny ’chute wasn’t designed to take her far – it was there for spins, jumps and loop-the-loops above the ocean, the board that was normally strapped to her feet coming into regular contact with the waves to gather speed and act as a springboard and counterweight. But now her legs dangled hopelessly as she was buffeted in amazing spirals and swung about like a wind-chime in a storm, letting out less than tuneful squeals of alarm and exhilaration.

  She had absolutely no control whatsoever.

  The wind had suddenly taken on more strength, changing unpredictably as the storm accelerated closer – something she hadn’t calculated on the ground. She could hear Richard’s voice in her head: ‘You stupid bitch. Watch the weather. You stupid bloody bitch.’ He was a meteorologist among surfers.

  ‘Fuck off, Richard!’ she screamed, dragging at the left toggle again and executing a complete 360-degree turn through the air. ‘Wow! Oh, hell! Wow!’

  At last the kite stabilised, finding a kind thermal that lifted Ellen up higher than she would have liked but mercifully kept her level.

  Suddenly she could see Spurs again – and the cows, which were now a lot smaller than they had been. She was sixty or seventy feet up, but at least she was travelling in the right direction. She tipped forward to drop the front of the ’chute and lose height – at the same time gathering speed alarmingly. When she passed over Spurs and the cows’ heads again, she was swooping faster than a Harrier jump jet. ‘Wheeeeeeee!’

  Over the stone wall she sailed, lifting in another thermal, throwing another 360-degree turn – far more controlled this time �
� and flying on down the valley.

  At last, she had the green waves she wanted beneath her feet as she soared over hedges and thickets. Far ahead of her lay Oddlode like a stony outcrop in an otherwise peaceful lagoon, its church spire forming a lighthouse to warn incomers of the dangerous undercurrents that waited there.

  Just for a moment, she saw herself fluttering all the way to the village – swooping in on Hunter Gardner as he drank another cafetière of coffee and kept watch.

  ‘What a laugh,’ she shrieked, her words whipped away by the wind.

  But she knew that any attempt to soar, loop-the-loop and thermal ride all the way to Oddlode would be far too high risk.

  ‘Concentrate,’ said a voice in her head. ‘Think about where to set the ’chute down. You haven’t much time.’

  ‘Go away, Richard!’ She wailed into the wind. ‘I’m having fun. You’re out of my life now.’

  The valley opened out beneath her dangling feet as she swept down into it much faster than she had anticipated, now feeling like a spinning tiddlywink propelled into a giant green cup. She missed a treetop by little more than inches, startling several young crows who gaped up at her from a high nest. She was flying almost directly over the bridleway now, and recognised the derelict stone barn that marked her turning place on runs from Goose Cottage.

  She knew there was a row of telegraph poles two-thirds of the way down so she had to land before them, but she also had to lose speed and height first.

  The ground was rushing past far too fast beneath her – faster than she’d ever travelled over the sea, and offering a far less sympathetic landing. She had to slow down. But every time she dipped the ’chute to lose height, she speeded up, and every time she gained height she changed direction, spinning dangerously out of control. The telegraph poles loomed closer by the second, along with a large wood and a farmhouse.

  ‘Fuck!’ Ellen squeaked. ‘It’s a lovely way to gooooooooo – nooooooooo!’

  The adrenaline rush was an all-time high, but she wasn’t ready to die. There was nothing for it . . .

  ‘Backwards,’ she told herself. ‘Up, over and put your heels down as brakes.’

  It was a leg-break move, but she had no choice. It was that or frying on a cheese-cutter wire.