The Hostage Heart

by Cynthia Harrod-Eagles

  “Laid her claim? What on earth are you talking about?” Zara said scornfully. “Last night she said she wanted to go because there was a spare place in the car. Now there isn’t a spare place in the car, she can stay at home. What’s all the fuss about?”

  There was a brief silence while Emma wondered what she had done to earn this resentment from a girl she barely knew, and struggled against the urge to say she would stay home, just to avoid more argument. Gavin began to fold up his newspaper with an air of finality.

  “There’s no fuss at all. If you really want to go, you can go in the Mini with Mrs H and Poppy, and I’ll take Miss Ruskin in my car.”

  He pushed back his chair and walked briskly from the room before anything more could be said. As he passed Emma’s chair she saw the tightly compressed lips and frown of annoyance, and thought, with a sinking heart, what a jolly drive they would have of it. Though it was Zara’s doing, he was bound to blame her for the disturbance of his peaceful breakfast and the nuisance of having to take two cars. She had not made a good impression on this family so far – but, really, who could have?

  Zara had the grace to look a little subdued at her brother’s exit, but Poppy was wide-eyed and garrulous. “Oh, it’s not fair! Oh, you lucky thing! I’ve been asking Gavin for ages to drive me in his car but he won’t take me. He drives ever so fast, and Mummy says he’ll kill himself one of these days, but I bet he won’t.”

  “Shut up, Poppy,” Zara growled.

  “Well, he won’t,” she said defiantly. “Daddy says no son of his is a bad driver, and he’s had the Elan a year and never got a scratch on it, so he must be good, because the Mini’s got dents all over, and Daddy says that’s because of Mrs H touch-parking. What’s touch-parking?”

  “Poppy, stop gabbling and drink your milk,” Mrs Henderson said, catching Emma’s eye and suppressing a laugh.

  Poppy stuck out her lip. “I don’t like milk. Why can’t I have tea?”

  “Because milk’s better for you,” Mrs Henderson said with the weary air of one who has covered this ground before. Emma noticed that very little of the boiled egg had gone down Poppy’s throat, and wondered whether it was because of all the chocolate eggs, or from the same cause as last night’s uneaten dinner. But Poppy was gathering herself for an argument, and Emma thought she ought not to be there to witness it, in case it turned Poppy against her as well.

  “I think I’ll go and tidy up, if you’ll excuse me,” she said, and fled the fractured family with as much dignity as she could muster.

  Her forecast of the journey to church was right: Gavin drove in grim silence, his eyes never straying from the road ahead, as if he was determined to get this tiresome task over with. Emma’s sense of mischief roused itself. She would make him talk! She began to ask him questions about anything that came into her mind: what are those birds over there? Oh, I see, and what’s the difference between a rook and a crow? And is a west wind one that blows from the west or to the west? And what sort of trees are those?

  Gavin answered her as abruptly as possible, until she over-reached herself and asked what were those flowers, pointing at random and happening to alight on a verge full of blowing yellow trumpets.

  “Daffodils,” he said shortly, glancing at her sidelong. “I suppose you want to tell me you don’t have those in London.”

  “Oh, but you see,” Emma said brightly, “country daffodils are so much bigger than town daffodils.”

  A flush spread across Gavin’s beautiful cheekbones, and his eyes were fixed on the road again. “I don’t know what sort of game you think you’re playing, but I suppose you think it’s clever to amuse yourself at others’ expense. We may live in the country, but we’re not exactly stupid, you know.”

  “I didn’t think you were,” Emma said, half contrite, half annoyed. “It was just a joke.”

  “Oh, a joke, was it?” Gavin swung the car backwards into a space alongside the churchyard wall. “Pardon me, but I thought the point of a joke was that it was supposed to be funny.”

  Emma’s contrition died the death. What a pompous prig, she thought. He got out of the car without another word and came round to her side to let her out. No one is at their best struggling up from the low seat of a sports car, but she would not take advantage of his offered hand. She extricated herself with as much dignity as she could muster, waited while he put the hood up on his car, and then walked ahead of him into the church. They sat side by side on a pew near the front, waiting for the others to arrive, while the organist played a voluntary; and she resolved she would not bother to talk to him again unless she had to. The whole weekend was a disaster, and if it really was Gavin who had the final say, she obviously wasn’t going to get the job.

  But the church was very beautiful, and it was Easter Sunday after all, and she felt she ought not to be sitting here in this resentful frame, so she cleared her mind of all negative thoughts and concentrated on enjoying the sights and sounds around her. Out of the corner of her eye she saw Gavin glancing at her out of the corner of his, and wondered whether he was sorry he had made so much fuss. Well, she wouldn’t give him the satisfaction! But no, that was negative again. She composed her expression and looked at him, ready to be friendly, but he was looking straight forward again and would not meet her eye, so she shrugged inwardly and dropped it.

  When they came out of the church after the service, Emma found to her surprise and annoyance that Gavin had been right about the weather. His prophecy had been fulfilled. The whole sky had clouded over, and the rain was just beginning, driven in large scattered drops by a brisk wind – a west wind, presumably, she thought sourly.

  “Oh blast,” Poppy said. “I wanted to show you the stables and my favourite ride this afternoon.”

  “It’s going to tip down any minute. It’s a good job I put the hood up,” Gavin said pointedly; but Emma thought he was entitled to an I told you so and that this was a pretty restrained one in the circumstances.

  “We’re holding up the traffic standing here,” Mrs Henderson said, coming up behind them in the porch. “I think we ought to get moving. Where’s Zara?” She was lingering behind talking to a friend. “Poppy, go and ask her to come along, would you?”

  Zara came up to them with two other girls of her own age, both pretty and smartly dressed, and with eyes that seemed drawn to Gavin like pins to a magnet, no matter who they were addressing. Well, it was natural, Emma thought. He was extremely easy on the eye.

  “Natalie and Victoria are coming back with us for lunch,” Zara announced brightly as she reached the group.

  “It’s awfully nice of you to invite us,” Natalie said. “It’s awful at home on Sunday afternoons, isn’t it, Vic?”

  “Awful,” Victoria agreed, gazing at Gavin. “It’s much nicer at your house, Zara.”

  “Well, I’m afraid you’ll have to wait here until I come back and fetch you,” Gavin said. “The Mini will only hold four.”

  “Oh, now, Gavin, don’t be stuffy,” Zara said at once, petulantly. “What’s the point in making two people wait instead of one?”

  “And which one had you in mind?” he asked grimly. “Yourself, I suppose?”

  “Don’t be silly, I haven’t got a coat. Besides, I have to go with Nat and Vic, they’re my guests. You can take Poppy back in your car and Mrs H can drive us girls, and Miss Ruskin can wait here. She’ll be quite all right under the porch,” she added hastily as Gavin’s brows drew down alarmingly.

  “You know perfectly well your mother doesn’t want Poppy to ride in my car,” he said. Emma felt a surge of impatience. For heaven’s sake, doesn’t this family do anything but argue? She was tired of being discussed like an inanimate object.

  “It’s all right, I can walk home,” she said. “I need some fresh air. And I’d like to see a bit of the countryside.”

  “No, you wait here and I’ll come back for you,” Gavin said, accepting the inevitable.

  “There’s no need—”

  “I s
aid, I’ll come back for you. It’s raining and it’s colder than you think, and you don’t know the way. Please don’t argue!” he added wearily as she opened her mouth to protest again, and she shrugged and closed it again. Gavin seized Zara’s arm and was hurrying her towards the car, and the others followed, keeping well enough back not to hear what he might be saying to her. Emma waited until they had gone, and then started to walk, as she had always intended to. She wasn’t going to be told what to do, especially not by God’s Gift to Women. It wasn’t very far, and it was a straight road. It wasn’t as if she could get lost.

  Maddeningly, Gavin was right about the cold. Emma had only been walking a few minutes when she realised it, and was sorry she had started to walk. It would have been better to stay in the church porch and be picked up. But no, she had to be pig-headed and prove that a Londoner was equal to a little weather and a few country lanes!

  But a country village on a Sunday in the rain was about the deadliest place imaginable. Every house was shut up tight, and there wasn’t a soul in sight, not so much as a dog or a passing car. In London the streets were never deserted in daylight; there was always somebody about. Now the rain was coming down harder, and she could have sworn the drops were wetter than London rain. She turned up her coat collar and looked about for shelter, but she was just leaving the village and there wasn’t so much as a tree in the hedgerow. The clouds were heavy and dark, making it seem like late afternoon, and the country lane stretched before her uninvitingly, flanked by tall wet hedges which shut out the view. I hate the countryside, she thought fervently, and stuffing her wet hands in her pockets for warmth, trudged on.

  There was no sign of Gavin. He ought to have got back to her by now, even driving at a normal speed. She thought wistfully of bright lights and a roaring fire – well, to be honest, even the flat in Muswell Hill with the radiator full up and the telly on would be heaven compared with this vista of wet useless fields under a wet dark sky. Still no Gavin. She bet he’d forgotten her. He was having cocktails or something and being purred over by those girls. Or maybe he’d decided to let her walk and teach her a lesson. Either way, she reckoned she was on her own. The road ahead of her was curving now in what she decided was the wrong direction. She remembered the road they had come by had not been straight, and she reckoned she would shorten her walk by a good bit if she were to cut across the fields instead of walking round two sides of them by the road. And if Gavin did come back for her and missed her, he’d know she must have taken a short cut.

  Anyone living in London, she thought, with all those twisty streets, must have a good enough a sense of direction to cross a few plain, straightforward fields. There was a gate in the hedge to her left, and she saw a field beyond of short, rather thin grass, and another gate on the far side. Brilliant, she thought. No problem to a genius like me.

  She was half way across when she heard someone shouting. She thought perhaps it was Gavin, and walked on, ignoring it loftily. The shouting was renewed, louder this time, and she realised belatedly it was not Gavin’s voice.

  “Hoi, you! What the hell d’you think you’re doing? Stop right there!”

  She looked round and saw a large man in gumboots hurrying round the edge of the field towards her. He was waving an angry fist, and under his other arm he carried what looked suspiciously like a gun.

  “Trampling all over my young wheat, you bloody trespassing vandal! I’ll have the law on you! Stand still, damn you!”

  Only now did Emma see that where she had walked there was a dark track through the thin green vegetation. Oh dear, she thought, her face hot with shame: not grass after all. The man was coming closer. Under his flat cap his face was red and angry, and it was definitely a gun he was carrying. Was he allowed to shoot trespassers? And if not, did he know he wasn’t? She didn’t feel inclined to find out. She was close to the gate now, and going back would be as bad for his wheat as going on, she reasoned, so much better she avoid the confrontation. She ran for the gate, to renewed yelling from the man behind her, and scrambled over in frantic haste, glad she had always been agile. In the field beyond the grass looked like grass, but she was taking no chances – and besides, crossing the middle of the field she’d make too good a target. She turned aside and began running as fast as she could along the side of the field, keeping close to the hedge.

  She couldn’t see another gate, apart from the one she had just come over, at which the man with the gun had now appeared and was inviting her to come back so that he could teach her to trample people’s crops. Pass on that one, she thought. The hedge she was jogging beside was rather threadbare in places, especially at the bottom, and after a bit she came to a place where she judged it would be possible to squeeze through. She managed it, with a struggle and some damage to her appearance, and found herself in another field, which had a gate on the far side, through which she could see a road. Getting her bearings, she decided triumphantly it was the same road, and that she had definitely cut off a wide loop. All the same, she was now very wet, cold and dispirited, and would be extremely glad to get back to civilisation.

  This grass really was grass, she decided, short and ragged and bitten down. Besides, there were cow-flops about, and that meant it couldn’t be a crop, could it? Pleased with her powers of deduction she hunched her shoulders against the suddenly heavier rain, and hurried on.

  Then she saw something move out of the corner of her eye. She looked, and through the mist of the driving rain she saw the black and white beasts gathered by the hedge, and realised the significance of the cow-dung. Well, cows were all right, she told herself firmly; cows didn’t hurt you. She was not going to behave like someone out of a Carry On film and run away from cows thinking they were bulls. She might be a townie but she wasn’t that green. She walked on steadily.

  One of the creatures had left the others and was walking towards her. Its path would intersect hers just before she reached the gate. Why would one cow want to inspect her when the others didn’t? She began to feel a little nervous. The cow hurried up a bit and got itself between her and the gate, and it stopped, turning a little so that she saw it sideways on for the first time. That was when she noticed that it didn’t have an udder.

  She turned cold, and stopped dead, frozen to the spot.

  A cow without an udder couldn’t be a cow. That meant it must be a bull. She was alone in a field miles from anywhere, with a bull between her and the only gate.

  The bull stared at her, and tossed its head. Sizing up where to gore her, was her panicky thought. Oh, what a fool she’d been! Why hadn’t she listened to Gavin? Why did she have to go and prove herself?

  Mustn’t run, she thought. Above all, mustn’t make any sudden move. Keep calm, and keep still. It was just staring at her. Maybe if she inched away very slowly to the right she could get to the hedge and force her way through. Slowly does it. Slo-o-wly.

  And then a small red car drew up in the road beyond the gate, and to her unmingled relief the familiar form of Gavin Akroyd stepped out and came up to the gate.

  “What in blazes do you think you’re doing?” he asked in his most supercilious, but at that moment welcome, voice. The bull looked round at him and then back at Emma, and moved a step away from him, which brought it closer to her.

  “Don’t shout!” she implored in a strangled voice. “Don’t startle it. You’ll make it charge me.”

  “Make it—? Oh, for heaven’s sake!” In one fluid movement he vaulted over the gate, and the bull gave a snort and a sort of curtsy, and bounced away from both of them, pausing a little way off to turn and look at them again. Gavin ignored it and walked over to her, gripping her upper arms as he realised her legs were about to give way.

  “What on earth are you doing, standing about in the middle of a field like a halfwit?” he asked her unamiably. “What are you doing in a field at all, for that matter? I thought I told you to wait in the church porch.”

  “You told me, yes – and then you didn’t come,” sh
e retorted through clenched teeth. She was beginning to shiver uncontrollably, from cold or reaction, she didn’t know which. “What was I supposed to think?”

  “I’m sorry, I got held up. But you should have waited. You didn’t think I’d just leave you there?”

  Put like that, it did seem unlikely – and insulting to him, really, to suppose it. She muttered something ungracious.

  “Come on, let’s get you to the car. I’m surprised at you, being afraid of a mere cow.”

  Here it comes, she thought, the poor ignorant townie bit! “I’m not afraid of cows,” she said shortly through her chattering teeth. “But any sane person is afraid of a bull – except, apparently, the great Gavin Akroyd.”

  “That wasn’t a bull, you ignoramus,” he said, amused.

  She pulled her arm free from his grip and turned to face him angrily. “Now look here, don’t try and get smart with me,” she said, almost crying. “I know a bull from a cow when I see one! Cows have udders!”

  He was grinning now, shaking his head with amusement. “Is that how you figured it out? You poor mutt, they’re all heifers in this field. Maiden cows. Their udders haven’t developed yet.”

  “Well, how the hell was I supposed to know that?” she shouted in a temper.

  He lifted his hands as if to hold her off. “Pax! It’s not my fault you decided to plunge into the Great Outback. Besides, even if your little friend there had charged you, she couldn’t have done you much harm. They’ve all been de-horned.”

  Well, so they had, she saw now. Why hadn’t she noticed that before? Her humiliation complete, she walked beside him in silence back to the car, not even comforted by the fact that he was managing quite creditably not to laugh. He let her in, went round the other side and climbed in beside her, and started the engine. “I’ll put the heater full up,” he said kindly. “You must be frozen, you poor thing.”

  It felt wonderfully warm inside the car, and the smell of new upholstery was comforting, essentially a smell of civilisation.