The Country Escape

by Fiona Walker

  Russ, secretly enthralled, pretended to be unimpressed as Dougie swapped the longbow for a lightweight horseman’s bow and threw apples up in the air, shooting them before they came down.

  ‘What if he misses? I calculate the trajectory of those arrows would take them straight into the tombola.’

  ‘Somehow I don’t think he misses.’ Kat was astonished at the skill on display. ‘And the arrows are tiny – look.’

  When Dougie called for a volunteer to take the apple on their head for his grand finale, he ignored the eager hands shooting up among his many female fans and homed in on Kat, the Everett Effect smile on speed ten. She smiled straight back, engaging in combat, knowing this was revenge for the dog show.

  ‘Don’t do it, Kat,’ hissed Russ, arm tightening around her.

  ‘I’m not about to let him point a lethal weapon at me.’ She spoke through the smile.

  Dougie was walking towards her now, charm on his lips, retribution in his eyes. ‘Will you join me, Kat?’

  Russ pulled her towards him. ‘You’ll notice her arm isn’t up.’

  ‘That’s because she has a six-foot badger holding it down,’ he pointed out. ‘Shall we let Kat decide?’ Leaning over the ropes he breathed so only she could hear, ‘Dare you.’

  Kat started. Those two words were her red rag.

  Before she could reply, a figure leaped into the ring nearby. ‘I’ll do it!’

  It was Mags, in her sexy fox ensemble. Having battled to get Dougie to notice her since his arrival, she had spotted the perfect opportunity.

  Letting Kat go so fast she spun round like a top, Russ ran to her. ‘I won’t let you, Mags! Besides, Kat’s doing it now.’

  Kat wasn’t listening. She was looking at Dougie and he was looking at her. The smile-off had dropped away. Her vital organs were staging a serious punch-up.

  Bill, who had been keeping up an overexcited, cider-fuelled commentary throughout, was beside himself: ‘Kat Mason, ladies and gentlemen!’ He forgot to switch off his mic as he asked someone nearby, ‘Are we insured for this?’

  Chapter 32

  Standing two feet in front of the straw target boss with an apple on her head, Kat stared unblinking at Dougie as he eyed her along the arrow, one blue eye closed, the other utterly focused.

  Her mind whirred. You’re letting him shoot at you. Are you mad?

  He dared me, the voice in her head reminded her, a familiar voice that had been silent for years. It was joined by Constance’s laughter-laced encouragement: Atta girl. You show him!

  The blue eye winked.

  The bow released.

  Thwwwwaaaa —

  The apple flew from Kat’s head before she realized it was gone.

  Steeling herself – because she thought she might faint, and she didn’t want Dougie Everett to guess how frightened she’d been – Kat winked back.

  ‘Ladies and gentlemen, I give you the legendary Hollywood actor and stuntman, Dougie Everett!’ Bill cheered over the PA.

  The crowd shrieked and clapped.

  Smile back in place, brighter than ever, Dougie strode forwards and clapped Kat, calling for more applause as he took her hand and raised it. Matching his smile and acknowledging the crowd, Kat bowed before pulling her hand away and indicating for them to clap Dougie instead. Then, looking down, she saw that the arrow he’d used had a foam head.

  ‘They’re used in archery tag – it’s like paintball.’ He gave the crowd a bow, glancing across at her. ‘At worst it’s like being hit by a softball, but I knew I wouldn’t miss. Don’t knock it. You look good. They all think it was a real arrow.’

  ‘You don’t have to make me look good.’ She smarted, her bravery undermined.

  ‘Nobody can make someone as beautiful as you look any better,’ he said, straightening so that his face was inches away from hers, the eyes back to their default, full-frontal flirt, as instinctively appealing as Quiver offering his belly. But there was a spark of something new in them that Kat recognized with delight: respect.

  In the crowd, simmering with resentment because the archery display had bumped his falconry show off the bill, Calum the Talon was not impressed: ‘Do that again with a galloping horse and I’ll buy you a drink!’

  The earthmen and some of the other Brom and Lem faithfuls hear-heared around him.

  Dougie’s face was very still, and Kat saw pain move across it like a cloud before the sun came out with his entertainer’s smile. ‘I haven’t got any trained horses any more.’

  ‘A Shetland can take an adult!’ Calum goaded, pointing towards the pony rides where the sanctuary’s Thelwellian duo were short on customers, the entire crowd focused on the archer.

  ‘Okay! Bring one over here!’ Dougie laughed, then whispered to Kat, ‘Don’t go away.’

  Kat was pretty gutsy if given a challenge, but the thought of Dougie shooting arrows at her – even foam-tipped ones – while careering around on one of the sanctuary’s ancient, evil Shetlands was alarming.

  ‘I really should be getting changed for the procession soon,’ she said wimpily.

  The larger of the pair was brought to the main ring, radiating ill temper after a long morning trawling around with small children on his back.

  Bill was having a terrific time: ‘Ladies and gentlemen, the Hollywood actor and stuntman Dougie Everett is giving us a fine display of bowmanship, I think you’ll agree, and he is now going to show off his horsemanship with the aid of our own lovely Kat Mason!’

  To amuse the crowd, Dougie put Kat on the Shetland first and insisted they trot around him while she held an apple on her head. Much to Kat’s humiliation, the pony had to stay on the lead rein and one of Dougie’s eager volunteers towed him along. Her toes trailed the ground as she bumped along, apple bobbing. It was like sitting on a moving washing-machine during a badly loaded spin cycle.

  ‘Hold it still!’ he ordered.

  Thwwwwaaaa —

  The apple was gone.

  Kat burst out laughing, climbing off and hugging the little pony, which got the apple as a reward. She looked up as Dougie put his bow under his arm and clapped her again, the flirtation in those blue eyes now even more diluted by respect.

  ‘Put your hands together, ladies and gentlemen!’ called Bill, now so pissed and enthralled he forgot to switch his mic off again as he added, ‘Fuck me sideways, this is good.’

  The crowd roared for more, stoked by Calum, knowing that the best trick was yet to come.

  Dougie flexed the wooden curve of his horseman’s bow across his knee and hooked the string tighter in the one grooved end to increase the tension. Then, indicating for Kat to stand in the centre of the ring with another apple, he swung a leg over the Shetland, nodded for the lead rope to be unclipped, and was off.

  The sight of him careering around with no steering, the pony’s ears now pricked as he was given his head and bucked for fun, had the crowd hooting and clapping long before the apple flew from Kat’s head. In truth, none of the arrows he shot got close. Realizing that Dougie was far too out of control to take aim and was deliberately shooting wide, Kat waited for an arrow to fly past and flicked her head back, sending another apple on its way.

  Taking Kat’s hand to share a final bow, Dougie squeezed it tight. ‘I owe you one.’

  ‘I made us both look good.’

  ‘We make a good-looking couple then.’ His fingers laced through hers as he held up her hand, bowing again. Kat felt that hand buzz with sparks, which threaded into her arm and the rest of her body in a carnival conga.

  On the PA, Bill was now fighting hard not to slur his words: ‘… proshession of veteran horses in five minutes and then the gymkhana will begin in the pony ring with the maypole dancing shtarting in the main ring at exactly two.’

  ‘Oh, Christ, I have to get Sri ready.’ Kat pulled her hand away from his and rushed off to the horsebox, grateful for the escape as the conga threatened to spiral out of control.

  Cyn’s ball dress, which Kat had been c
rammed into in a tearing hurry, was a hideous coral pink 1960s number and far too tight. Sri certainly looked horrified when Kat rustled towards her, bright red in the face from all the corset-string-heaving, her breathing shallow and painful.

  ‘I had a hand-span waist as a gel,’ Cyn said wistfully, as she and Pru helped her up into the unfamiliar saddle, guiding her right leg around the leaping horn before arranging her skirt so that it covered her legs and feet. ‘Sri knows all about side-saddles – she was trained to take one so that Constance could be mounted at the Brom and Lem Hunt’s bicentennial meet; must have been eighty-eight or -nine by then. Such an amazing horsewoman. You’d make her very proud today.’

  ‘Shouldn’t I be wearing a hard hat?’ Kat asked nervously, as Sri skittered sideways.

  ‘Nonsense.’ Pru reached down to haul up the girth. ‘Impossible to fall out of a side-saddle. I hunted in a bowler. Never took a tumble.’

  ‘Besides, I brought you a mask and Mummy’s tiara to wear,’ said Cyn, groping in a plastic bag for them. ‘It goes so beautifully with the dress. I wore it when I came out, as did Pru. We were quite the talk of the town.’

  Hanging on tightly to the reins as Sri snatched at the bit, Kat wondered if the elderly spinsters were Eardisford’s incestuous Sapphic secret, but then Cyn added, ‘Of course, we were both debutantes in the days one was presented to the Queen. Nowadays one’s presented on Made in Chelsea. Lean down.’

  Doing as she was told, Kat found herself wearing a Venetian mask with a huge nose and a remarkably heavy jewelled tiara.

  Before she could straighten up, Sri shot off, crabbing sideways again, determined to show that she barely qualified as veteran: she was, after all, in her early teens. By comparison, the other Lake Farm oldies shuffled along in the sun like Chelsea pensioners at Trooping the Colour, led in hand by Cyn, Pru and a small clutch of pony-mad teenage volunteers, and followed by a host of local equine pensioners brought along for the occasion by their owners.

  Wrapping the reins twice around her hands before bracing them together and grabbing a hunk of mane, Kat clung on with all her strength to stop the mare tanking off. As she tried to accustom herself to sitting with one leg wrapped around a fixed head pommel, she found the tiara slipping over her eyes, like a pair of dark glasses, pushing the mask over her nose and mouth, but her hands were full so she couldn’t reach up to shift it back. She shook her head, but that just dropped the tiara even lower on to her nose, and now she couldn’t see a thing.

  Watching from the sidelines, Quiver furiously attacking his boot toes, Dougie snorted in amusement at Kat’s ridiculous sparkly spectacles – she looked like Dame Edna. Then he realized they were blinding her.

  Further back in the procession and equally blind, the sanctuary’s ex racehorse Sid was happily following the familiar big, grey rump of his ancient field-mate as he was led along by Pru. When she stopped to chat to a WI friend, ignoring the old horse’s desperate attempts to drag her along in his wake, she had no idea that she was effectively taking away Sid’s white stick. Losing sense of his friend’s whereabouts entirely, he panicked and plunged into the bric-à-brac. Meanwhile, the smaller Shetland had towed his teenage handler to the cake stall, where he was laying claim to a Victoria sponge. Not to be outdone, and maddened by flies, his bigger sidekick led a stampede to the Pimms tent. Oblivious to it all, tiara over her eyes, Kat sat out a few skittish bucks from Sri as she led the march across God’s Plot, those curling ears so tightly pricked that the tips were overlapping.

  In the wide tented pagoda where a sound stage had been set up for the bands, a smoky, screeching wail came through the speakers, so loud that two nearby toddlers burst into tears and Quiver dived behind Dougie’s legs.

  Sri shot forwards, then went rapidly into reverse and up on her hind legs as instinct had taught her, tall and fierce against the predators doing a soundcheck, front hoofs paddling. Unaccustomed to the extra weight of the old side-saddle on her back and the rider tipping badly to one side, the mare reared up beyond her balance point.

  ‘Oh, shit, she’s going over backwards!’

  Dougie leaped into action. Taking a running jump, he launched himself across the mare’s withers, tipping her back to the ground. She jinked sideways in a messy stagger then found her feet in a splay-legged landing, just as another feedback screech echoed from the pagoda speakers and Mags rasped into the microphone, ‘You all right, Kat love?’

  That was too much for Sri. With Dougie still lying across her neck, she spun around and headed fast for the nearest exit, almost wrenching Kat’s arms from their sockets.

  A chorus of alarm went up as yet more veteran horses charged off in all directions, apart from the lame old Lake Farm hunter: he dropped his head to eat the grass beneath him.

  ‘Whoa, Sri!’ Kat screeched. Wherever they were headed, it couldn’t be good.

  Dougie had a better view, but agreed it wasn’t good. They were fast approaching the gateway that led from God’s Plot to the church graveyard, a small kissing gate facing straight on to the Mytton mausoleum and private plot.

  ‘Try pulling the reins,’ he suggested, assessing the narrow gateway and realizing he wouldn’t fit through it in his current dead-stag position.

  ‘You’re lying across my hands,’ she pointed out, surprisingly calmly. ‘So either hop off the bus or take over the steering wheel.’

  Dougie steered, rather too quickly. He was accustomed to riding horses in every conceivable daredevil stance, so scrambling into the driving seat, leaning down to grab the reins and apply the brakes was no great challenge, but it took both Sri and Kat by surprise. One stopped dead. The other kept going, taking Dougie with her.

  Kat landed front down in a bank of long, spongy grass, grateful for the soft cushion. She lifted her head and saw Sri standing to her left – the mare was looking down at her with a benign what-are-you-doing-down-there? expression – and Dougie lying to her right, his blue eyes less benign because in the long grass he’d landed on there was a hard mound of mole-hill.

  ‘I thought it was virtually impossible to fall off a side-saddle?’ she said breathlessly.

  ‘Depends whose side you’re on.’

  Chapter 33

  ‘I wish I’d bloody been there!’ Dawn sounded awestruck by the report Kat had given her of the show.

  Phone propped against her shoulder, Kat raced around the kitchen feeding the dogs, kissing the cats’ noses and awaiting the Lake Farm horses’ return in the lorry with Tireless Tina. She was still wearing Cyn’s ball dress.

  ‘It was the best craic I’ve had all year,’ she said honestly. ‘I felt alive, Dawn!’

  ‘Adrenalin junkie,’ Dawn scolded. ‘You’ll be riding that Wingnut thing before we know it.’

  ‘The Bolt. And you know, after today, I think I can.’

  ‘Then you can come home.’

  ‘It’s not quite as simple as that,’ Kat laughed, leaning out of the kitchen door into the yard as she heard an engine in the distance.

  Dawn’s voice dropped to a conspiratorial whisper, as though aged parents and jealous husbands were listening in. ‘I seriously think Dougie Everett has you in his sights.’

  ‘Well, he was shooting at me,’ Kat pointed out, moving further into the yard as the lorry pulled into the gateway, the dogs surging out to greet it.

  The elderly Lake Farm horses were exhausted after their group outing at the show. When Kat turned them out in the evening sun, they each rolled ecstatically before retiring beneath the shadow of the biggest chestnut to stand nose to tail, swatting flies – all apart from Sri who, at her most aloof and Greta Garbo, wandered away from her herd to the edge of the lake while Usha wallowed in the shallows nearby.

  Trailed by the dogs, Kat went to find the hosepipe, which had to be hauled out to fill the field trough. As she dragged it to the nearest tap and started to unravel its kinks, cursing Russ for not rolling it up properly, she realised there was another horse in the field. At first she thought it was the old gre
y hunter, but he was still head to tail with best friend Sid, his coat white as bone. This grey was covered with tiny chestnut flecks, like her own freckles. As tall as Sri, the horse had appeared from between the gorse bushes behind the beech tree and joined the tail-flicking herd to make polite conversation.