by Fiona Walker
Instead, she was determined to get in as much riding as she could in the build-up to the charity fun race, in which she was now entered on Tireless Tina’s old event horse, Donald. If she could ride in that, she was certain the Bolt was within her grasp.
Chapter 13
‘Oh, God.’ Tina clamped her hands over her dark-rimmed eyes as her best horse lolloped past with Kat hanging around his neck. ‘How many times? Sit UP when you ask for the transition.’ She turned away to answer the phone as Donald came to a steady halt by the rails and lowered his neck helpfully, like a crane, for Kat to get off.
After the lesson, she consoled herself that she had to be improving slightly. She no longer ached so much afterwards, and Tina got the giggles less, although she had started to get quite short-tempered, shouting and swearing more. She’d even suggested Kat might want to try another instructor, just for variety and a fresh pair of eyes, but Kat liked Tina, who was kind, friendly and hard-working, and Constance had suggested her. She loved the walk to and from her stableyard, sometimes stopping off en route to catch up with the Hedges family or Miriam, take Russ some lunch in the orchards or visit Constance’s grave, then divert home through Herne Covert and the paddocks to see Sri, an important part of their new bonding routine.
Spring had arrived with all-out fecundity. As rocket-fuel grass shot up through the drying mud, the horses were shedding their woolly-mammoth winter coats at last. It was the first time Kat had turned Sri out without her rug and her coat was a splash of Titian and white against emerald. The mare threw up her head and whinnied with recognition, making her laugh. The acknowledgement had been hard won.
Russ had been helping Kat get closer to Sri using his natural horsemanship, although the herd’s wall-eyed alpha mare, who disliked men intensely, had refused to make an exception for soft-spoken giant Russ, so irritated by his slow and ponderous approach that she kicked out and nipped when he came close. Instead, he’d resorted to demonstrating his techniques with one of the Shetlands. Kat was trying to replicate them faithfully each day, although Sri often lost interest and wandered away. She’d been having more luck with the tip Tina had passed on about something called ‘long lining’, which involved walking behind the horse with two long ropes attached to the bit instead of reins, as though they had forgotten to couple up a carriage. It was silly but good fun, and they now went on regular blustery, sun-dappled walks around the fields with the dogs. Tina insisted it was ‘essential ground work’, which made it sound like they were digging ditches.
Today, she tried Russ’s ‘join-up’ technique of approaching the mare from the side, rubbing her forehead, speaking a few soft words, then turning away. At this point Sri was supposed to follow her like a dog, a result of a lot of chasing her around that Kat had done over the previous fortnight. She set off purposefully for a few paces. When she looked back, the mare had turned away and was eating grass, but Kat had a Shetland super-glued to each leg, sniffing her pocket for mints.
She turned back to Sri and clicked. The mare let out a long-suffering sigh and wandered across, flattening her ears to see off the Shetlands before dropping her muzzle into Kat’s hands and blowing noisily on them to warm them. Kat pressed her forehead against Sri’s, humbled and honoured by the developing friendship.
She was grateful for the increasingly long daylight hours that kept her outside with the animals, especially Sri, who she loved more each day. There were also newborns to be tended – the pygmy goats had been randy, as well as the sheep – and the vegetable patch to plant out, along with the usual mountains of muck to shift, feeds to mix, stock to move around and repairs to make or oversee, including the ones funded by the big donation.
These were desperately needed. Two days ago, she’d returned from running her Bums and Tums class to find that two of the oldest Jacob ewes had fallen down a twenty-foot cutting and drowned in the millstream, side by side in a fluffy suicide pact.
Russ had been her saviour, rallying help from the village to remove the bodies, mending the broken fencing to prevent more escapes, making endless tea. ‘Sheep have an extraordinary talent for dying,’ he’d told her. ‘Nothing you can do will stop them. Like twenty-seven-year-old rock stars.’
She hadn’t got the reference, then felt stupid when he explained in reverent terms that Jim Morrison, Kurt Cobain and Amy Winehouse had all died at that age, ‘not to mention Janis Joplin, Jimi Hendrix, Brian Jones’.
About to say twenty-seven was a pretty amazing age for a sheep, Kat had stopped herself. Russ could be tetchy about things like that. She was indebted to him for her survival at Lake Farm – he put in long hours helping around the farm and was incredibly gentle and knowledgeable with the animals – and he could be great company who never crowded her, his encyclopaedia mind was extraordinary and his kindness boundless. Yet she felt bulldozed by his good intentions sometimes, irritated that he pitched his tent on such moral high ground although he had lived rent-free at Lake Farm for most of the winter. Now that spring had arrived, it was something of a relief that he’d started spending more nights in his caravan in the Hedges’ blossoming orchard. In fact, he’d become increasingly aloof lately, free-ranging of old, wrapped up with his fruit trees, wildlife and music.
Their Tantric sessions, however, had moved on to exciting new territory. Russ now permitted touching, massaging each other’s chakras, albeit modestly through their pyjamas. There had been one amazing night when Kat’s swadishthani had reached a fever pitch of bubbling excitement. But he’d got annoyed that she again lost count during her nine times table, and insisted they mustn’t rush it, so they were now back to breathing exercises, asphyxiated by joss sticks and accompanied by the track-jumping Ravi Shankar CD.
Tonight was circled in the kitchen calendar as another meditation session, and Russ had been quite put out when Kat had written ‘Movie Night’ across the date too, but she had seen no reason not to do both.
‘That rather depends on the film,’ Russ had grumbled.
Kat had assured him it was a classic old Western.
The village hall’s monthly film screening was always packed, and tonight’s showing of High Noon was no exception, although the blue-rinse brigade lined up in the front row let out a chorus of disapproval to discover it wasn’t the original they’d been led to believe, but a remake with unknown stars who looked about fifteen in their eyes.
Kat arrived late and bristled irritably to find that Russ, crammed into the back row with his band members, all drinking cider, had not saved her a place. The only free seat was between elderly farming sisters Pru and Cyn, and Dair Armitage. She plonked herself into it just as the opening credits rolled.
‘Isn’t this exciting?’ Cyn whispered, as the name Dougie Everett flashed up. ‘I used to hunt with his father. Terrific thruster.’ She pulled out a pair of ancient opera glasses, although they were sitting barely twenty feet from the screen.
The director wasted no time in getting down to business with the two leads, who had clearly just got married, ripping one another’s clothes off before the movie’s title had even appeared.
Kat stared wide-eyed at the incredibly good-looking actor playing misunderstood marshal Will Kane, who was disrobing a nubile blonde in a wedding dress with great urgency.
‘Gosh, he’s a very smart specimen,’ muttered Pru, sounding as though she was assessing a young Hereford bull calf. ‘Who is he?’
‘That’s Dougie Everett,’ said Cyn, adjusting the opera glasses. ‘Looks just like his father from the neck down.’
The occupants of the village hall were now red-faced, although it was hard to tell whether this was because the radiators were at full blast or as a result of the steamy scene currently being enacted before them. Crammed between Dair and Cyn, who were both breathing very heavily, Kat was obliged to watch as handsome Dougie kissed his beautiful co-star, now hiking up her skirts while simultaneously unbuckling his belt. Watching a sex scene with an entire village was very similar on the awkwardness scale to watc
hing a sex scene with one’s parents. She fought an urge to talk rapidly and loudly about a random subject – the dead sheep at Lake Farm or the huge lorry weighed down with marble that had got stuck in a cattle grid en route to the main house – but she managed to keep her mouth buttoned. She could imagine Russ’s eyes boring into the back of her head: he alone knew why this would be harder for her than most of them.
‘Oh, a nipple!’ Pru observed eagerly, as though they were witnessing a live vole birth on Springwatch.
The bride’s creamy breasts spilled from her bodice and Dougie Everett’s mouth moved from one to the other, drawing their buds into his lips, artfully shot to maximize the revving in groins both male and female. The urgency between the couple was real, the sexual attraction undeniable.
A familiar scythe of fear was swinging towards Kat, her pulses racing and sweat rising. She knew a big-action Hollywood bed scene was as far removed from Nick’s taste for internet porn as gourmet cooking from junk food, but her response to the images on screen was Pavlovian, her heartbeat now so fast it hurt.
Beside her, Dair was breathing even more heavily. Intensely uncomfortable, she glanced across at him and saw, amazed, that he still had his flat cap pressed down over his eyes and appeared to be asleep.
‘Poor chap was out all night with his keepers trying to catch lampers,’ Cyn whispered, before her watery blue eyes returned to the screen and her jaw dropped. ‘Would you look at that? She is completely naked. Why has she got practically no public hair?’
Someone shushed as the High Noon remake’s seminal ‘muff’ scene played out on screen.
Kat’s mouth went dry, a hundred far more explicit muff scenes playing through her mind, examined in minute detail by Nick as he’d coaxed her into re-enacting them with him. The memory made her feel faint. She’d just have to close her eyes and wait it out. But then the camera closed in on Dougie Everett’s face and she stayed watching, unable to stop herself, as his extraordinary eyes seemed to drink in the girl with him; something about the way he kissed made for totally compulsive viewing.
Dair had snorted awake and was blinking at the screen in wonder.
‘I don’t remember the first High Noon being like this.’ He admired the pair of pert buttocks on screen. ‘Very attractive derrière.’
‘That’s Dougie Everett’s bum.’ Cyn giggled, earning another ‘Ssh’ from behind. She lifted her opera glasses again, angling them past the wisps of white hair escaping from her bun.
‘Amazing the director got away with that straight after the credits,’ Dair muttered.
‘That boy’s far too young to play that part,’ complained Pru, in a disapproving undertone. ‘Gary Cooper was in his fifties. And she’s no Grace Kelly.’
They all tilted their heads as Kiki Nelson was laid back expertly on the lacy bed.
‘Dougie Everett is buff,’ a girl behind Kat said, with a deep sigh, and her friends tittered.
‘Shouldn’t this be on after the watershed?’ Pru’s mouth turned down disapprovingly, her long, thin turkey neck wobbling as Will Kane stripped to his waist, revealing taut abs and a heavenly six-pack. ‘Movie night should be family viewing, especially at Easter.’
‘I read in the Telegraph that the co-stars are practically married,’ Cyn assured her. ‘It’s all very respectable.’
‘Dougie Everett and Kiki Nelson are engaged in real life,’ Dair explained, earning a surprised look from Kat and the elderly sisters, who had no idea he was so clued up on popular culture. Having been buried in Herefordshire for more than two years without a television, and far from Dawn’s regular supplies of OK! and Hello!, Kat had missed Dougie Everett’s mercurial rise to fame and had no idea who he was, or Kiki Nelson of the gravity-defying breasts and feather-thin Brazilian.
‘She’s a lucky girl.’ Cyn sighed. ‘Not only is he frightfully handsome, but he’s going to inherit half of Northamptonshire one day. And he hunts.’
‘Good hedge country.’ Pru looked more approving, her face relaxing as the scene cut to Dougie slotting a dusty boot into a leather stirrup, squinty-eyed and handsome in bright sunlight as he mounted a palomino horse and galloped off through some dust balls. ‘Now we’re talking.’
Dougie Everett – who took his clothes off several more times and killed a lot of baddies at the end with gruesome, drawn-out violence – was something of a revelation. While the general consensus was that Gary Cooper was the definitive Will Kane, nobody could dispute this young man’s charisma.
‘Kiki’s the big box-office star,’ Dair told Kat, who looked around for Russ as the lights went up, only to find he and the band had already sloped out, rushing to be first at the pub bar. ‘Everett was paid peanuts.’
‘How come you know so much?’
‘I’m a movie-trivia buff. Can I buy you a drink?’ he asked hopefully, flat cap back over his nose to hide his blushes.
She shook her head, disappointed by Russ’s neglect, unwilling to fight her way to his side in the crowded pub or occupy an opposite corner watching him cackling with his band, Mags and the earthmen, if he was in one of his free-range moods.
‘Lift?’
‘I brought my car, thanks. I was running late.’ Cooking a vegan bean casserole for Russ to apologize for double-dating his Tantric night, she added silently. She’d probably end up feeding it to the pigs.
Dair stayed at her shoulder as they filed out into a cool spring night. ‘How is your lovely friend Dawn?’
‘Great! Got a lovely new boyfriend.’ Kat was keen to deflect him, although Dawn’s latest internet dating relationship had only lasted a fortnight before she found out he had a wife and two kids. ‘He’s a fitness instructor. Huge pecs. More tattoos than Mags, but not quite as butch.’
‘Be careful when you’re handling that one, Kat.’ Dair cleared his throat awkwardly.
‘Are you talking about Dawn’s date or Mags?’ she joked, trying to think up a funny one-liner about the barmaid’s new vixen stage costume, but stopping when she noticed the deepening glow of the uncomfortable blush beneath the flat cap, his chin quilted with that awkward, clenched lockjaw of a man who thinks he might have said too much. ‘Why should I be careful of Mags?’ she whispered, stepping away from the crowd milling around the village hall porch, loudly praising Dougie Everett’s talent.
Following, arms crossed, he tipped his head down so she could only see a circle of hounds-tooth tweed. His nasal Scots voice softened: ‘You have a lot to learn about animal husbandry, Kat.’
‘I’m trying.’ She bristled, thinking he was referring to her limited smallholding skills.
‘That band goes back a long way.’
She checked herself. ‘Do you mean Animal Magnetism?’
‘Aye. It’s what I said.’ The flat cap was almost combusting from the awkward blush raging beneath now, which she could see streaking into his neck. ‘Although it was Dirty Mags before that, and when I arrived they called themselves the Babysitters. Things round here take a long time to figure out. They’re never as simple as they first seem.’
Driving back through the woods, Kat mulled this over, but she wasn’t sure what Dair had been trying to tell her, other than that the pub band had been through several dodgy names.
‘Shit!’ She slammed on the brakes as a figure in a hoodie stepped out straight in front of her. It was Russ, eyes white in the headlights.
‘I thought you’d gone to the pub,’ she said, her heart roaring from the near miss as he got in beside her.
He pulled off his hood, the white-tipped lion’s mane tumbling out. ‘We have a meditation date.’
As they drove on in silence, Kat found herself wondering whether, in his roundabout way, Dair had been trying to tell her that Russ and Mags had once been more than just friends.
‘What did you think of the film?’ he was asking.
‘A bit violent. You?’
‘So-so. Hollywood movies are pretty much all Republican didactic propaganda.’ He glanced across at her, the bear eyes w
orried and protective. ‘We don’t have to meditate tonight if you’d rather not.’
‘I want to.’
‘Is it hard for you? Watching such explicit stuff?’
‘It’s a lot tamer than the stuff Nick liked.’
‘Sorry – I know you prefer not to talk about it.’
She swallowed awkwardly. They lapsed into silence again.
There was something highly charged about the atmosphere when they got back to Lake Farm, despite the dogs sniffing around as usual, the cat flap rattling, the range burbling back into life and the wet logs spitting on the grate.
For once the Ravi CD didn’t jump; Kat remembered her nine times table; their eyes didn’t leave one another’s.
