A Country Escape

by Katie Fforde

  ‘Oh, Tig!’

  He smiled properly. ‘And my mother’s been up to skim off the cream. We didn’t like to waste it.’

  ‘Oh, Tig! Oh, Mary! I love you both.’

  She set off towards the house, her mood suddenly upbeat. She would have a quick bath, then she would gear up into her cheesemaking clothes and head for the cheese room. She would make the most of this marvellous opportunity.

  She was glad she’d made mascarpone often enough now to feel confident about what she was doing, although she always concentrated really hard. It was vital that she didn’t add too much culture as the unpasteurised milk has its own bacterial structure. But once she’d done the initial blending of milk and cream and got it to the right temperature, she could leave it for twelve hours. If she got up early, she could drain it until it was nearly the right texture, and then she’d get on to Roger and he could send the courier. Sleep wasn’t far away, she kept reminding herself.

  Once again the cheese room wrought its calming magic. She’d designed it, Antony had brought it into being, and she loved it. She also loved mixing the pale yellow cream and milk, stirring it, working her alchemy, transforming it into the most sumptuous cheese she had ever eaten. As she tested the temperature of the cheese, time and again, waiting for it to read the right number, she wondered if this could satisfy her. Maybe she didn’t need to make a hard cheese? Maybe this was enough?

  But later, as she finally finished cleaning down the cheese room, she realised it wasn’t. She had to find that quarry and learn the proper skills of a cheesemaker.

  It was just after 7 p.m. when she made her way back into the house, extremely tired but extremely satisfied. She could now leave her cheese to drain for twelve hours, set her alarm for seven in the morning, finish the cheese off and then ring the courier. What could go wrong?

  Because life had a habit of going wrong, Fran paid attention to this usually rhetorical question and did more mental checks than usual. But it all seemed fine. Peachy, even!

  She was humming to herself as she went in through the back door. Issi was there, stirring something. She turned round as soon as Fran entered.

  ‘Hi! Cheese go well?’

  Fran knew instantly that something wasn’t right. Issi’s words and voice were perky, but her face was a picture of terror.

  ‘Yes, good, thank you. But, Is? What’s wrong?’

  Issi’s expression was agonised. ‘Roy’s back!’ She was obviously worried about being overheard. ‘He brought a friend.’

  Fran began to understand. There was more to it than just an extra person for supper.

  ‘They’re drunk!’ whispered Issi.

  Pennies began to drop like coins from a fairground games machine. ‘Very drunk?’ Fran whispered.

  Issi nodded. ‘I’m cooking a big meal!’ she said loudly.

  Fran wasn’t sure what, if anything, could be overheard next door and realised Issi didn’t know either. It was best to play it safe though. She raised her voice: ‘Great! You didn’t invite Tig to stay?’

  ‘No. He’d gone before I knew we had guests.’ She rolled her eyes in the direction of the sitting room.

  It was all a bit ridiculous and Fran was beginning to see the funny side.

  ‘That’s a shame,’ said Fran. ‘It would have been nice to celebrate the birth of the calf together.’

  ‘I know but he had such an early start.’

  Fran took a minute to work out when her own start had been but as she’d been awake feeding hungry puppies every two hours through the previous night it was hard to say. She decided not to comment. ‘But the calf is OK?’

  Issi nodded. ‘They both are. Antony is just so sweet!’

  Fran smiled to hear the calf’s name. ‘I wonder how the human Antony is?’

  ‘You could ring him!’ Issi seemed very enthusiastic about this idea. ‘Invite him for supper?’

  ‘Oh no. Honestly, I’m dead on my feet. I expect he is too. He was looking after the puppies as well before he went to London. God knows if he’s had a chance to catch up on his sleep.’

  ‘But you’ll eat?’ Issi still sounded a bit desperate.

  ‘Of course. I didn’t think I was hungry but now I’ve smelt food I’m starving.’ Fran smiled, hoping to spread reassurance.

  ‘It’s chilli,’ said Issi.

  ‘It is a bit, for the time of year, but put a coat on, you’ll be fine.’ Not a glimmer of response from one of their favourite, oft-repeated, jokes. ‘Issi? Shall I go and say hello to Roy and his guest?’

  ‘That might be a good idea,’ Issi replied, tasting the chilli from the wooden spoon she was stirring with and then throwing the spoon back in the pot. ‘Offer them coffee?’

  Fran knew that Issi would never have tasted the chilli and put the spoon back in front of her unless she was very rattled; it was one of Fran’s pet hates. She lowered her voice. ‘How drunk are they, then?’

  ‘Extremely. It’s one of the reasons I got the chilli on early. I thought it might help sober them up a bit.’

  ‘Are they – you know – aggressive?’ At the best of times, Fran’s heart rate increased whenever she thought about having to deal with Roy; if he and his mate were fighting drunk, she might completely panic.

  ‘Why don’t you go next door and see? I’ll get this on to plates. We can eat through there. Then if they pass out we can just leave them there.’

  Fran nodded. ‘I’ll go and say hello.’ She paused. ‘Have you got any wine open?’

  Issi nodded. ‘Roy brought it. Sip?’

  ‘Yes please.’ She took hold of the offered glass and tasted the strong Australian wine. Delicious but potentially lethal. ‘OK,’ she said. ‘I’m going in.’

  Fran took a breath, drummed up a smile and opened the door of the sitting room.

  The smell hit her. Alcohol was coming in waves from the two men who were half sitting, half lying, taking a sofa each.

  ‘Hi, guys!’ Fran said brightly, far more warmly than she would usually be with Roy. ‘What have you been up to?’ It was blindingly obvious what they’d been doing but it felt polite to ask.

  ‘Gin,’ said Roy. ‘We went on a tour.’

  His friend, who might have been slightly less drunk than Roy, struggled upright. ‘Hi, I’m Barry.’

  ‘Hi, Barry. So you went on a tour that involved gin?’

  Barry and Roy both nodded. ‘Lots of gin.’

  Barry cleared his throat, obviously making an effort. ‘It was a distillery.’ The word didn’t come out perfectly, but well enough. ‘They had tours. Lots of samples, different sorts of gin.’

  ‘I see. So how did you get here?’

  ‘Left the car there,’ said Roy, much to Fran’s relief. Otherwise she’d have been scanning the news obsessively, waiting to hear of a hit-and-run accident. ‘Walked here.’

  ‘Oh my goodness! Where did you have to walk from?’

  Barry waved an arm. ‘Was quite local. Bloody taxi wouldn’t take us. We weren’t even drunk then.’

  Fran thought about this. ‘So when did that happen?’

  ‘On the way home,’ said Roy. ‘We drank the bottle we’d bought. But it was all herbal, it said. I didn’t expect it to have alcohol in it.’

  ‘Really? Don’t they have gin in Australia?’ Fran asked, incredulous.

  Roy nodded. ‘Yeah, they do, but they went on and on about the botanicals, flowers and such, that was in the stuff, I thought maybe it was like Auntie Amy’s cowslip wine. In fact,’ he went on, ‘we found a bottle of that and added the gin.’

  ‘I thought you drank the gin on the way home from the distillery,’ said Fran, no longer pretending to be nice about all this.

  ‘Not all of it!’ Barry was indignant. ‘We bought several bottles.’

  Fran’s barmaid experience took her only so far. In a pub she could have ordered them (shoved them, with help from some hefty male bar staff) off the premises and there her responsibility would have ended. But these drunks were in her home and ther
e were no hefty bar staff.

  ‘OK, well, I think maybe your next drink should be black coffee. And then we’ll eat. Issi’s made a chilli. I’ll just set the table.’

  ‘Oh, we’re eating in here, are we?’ said Roy. ‘Because we’ve got guests.’

  Fran decided to tell them what Issi had said. ‘No, it’s so that if you pass out, we don’t have to move you. Now I’ll make the coffee. Roy? Have you shown Barry where the downstairs loo is?’

  ‘Loo?’

  ‘The dunny,’ she explained, grateful for all the Australians she’d worked with in the past.

  ‘Well,’ she reported back to Issi who was cooking rice and grating cheese. ‘They are dreadfully drunk, but, so far, not too unpleasant.’

  ‘But you won’t go to bed and leave me with them?’ Issi said. ‘I haven’t had your experience working in bars. I don’t really know how to handle drunks.’

  ‘I certainly won’t leave you with them. I am pretty tired, but I think they’ll pass out fairly soon. Let’s feed them and hope that sends them off.’

  ‘Do you think we should put them to bed after supper?’

  ‘We can try. Let’s see if the coffee and food helps.’

  Gin, it transpired, didn’t make them nasty, it made them garrulous, very, very garrulous.

  Fran, who’d found herself drinking a glass of wine although she’d tried not to, nodded off several times during the meal.

  Still they went on, discussing the finer points of some rugby match neither of them had been to in real life but obviously obsessed them. They took ages to eat their food, but every time either Fran or Issi suggested they’d had enough and offered to take their plates, they clung on to them, took another tiny forkful and then went back to the rugby match.

  Eventually, Fran could stand it no more. She’d wasted enough of her precious sleeping time with these idiots; she would waste no more.

  ‘So, Barry?’ she addressed him firmly. ‘Where are you going to sleep? Shall we make you comfy on the sofa? I’m afraid all the rooms are occupied.’

  ‘Couldn’t I share with you, Fran?’ Barry asked.

  ‘No,’ she said brutally. ‘Roy? Time for bed. Off you go—’

  ‘Now, hang on! Who are you to tell me when I should go to bed?’

  ‘Someone who has to be up very early in the morning,’ she said.

  ‘We don’t need your permission. We can go to bed when we like!’ Roy went on.

  Fran was not letting up. ‘Not tonight you can’t. I’ve had no proper sleep for days and I have to be up at seven tomorrow to work on my cheese. You’re both going to have horrific hangovers in the morning. The longer you have to sleep them off, the better. Now off to the bathroom’ – she pointed in the direction of the door – ‘and when you come back I’m going to make you both drink a pint of water and take some painkillers. That may stave off the worst.’ They didn’t move. ‘Go on! Now!’

  Barry caved in first. He shambled off in the direction of the loo. Roy got up too, muttering darkly about uppity Sheilas and feminism having spiralled out of control.

  ‘God, you’re good,’ said Issi when they’d both gone. ‘Who knew you could be so bossy? They went off like lambs.’

  ‘I think the threat of the hangover helped. I’ll just get them their water and paracetamol.’

  ‘We should really give them milk thistle,’ said Issi, who’d become a bit of a hippy since she’d moved to the country.

  ‘I’d give them ketamine if I thought it would get them out of my hair.’ Fran was not going to pussyfoot around with flower remedies or anything remotely natural and benign.

  ‘The horse drug?’ Issi laughed. ‘You are one tough woman!’

  Fran tried to stay awake until she could be sure that Roy and Barry were safely comatose but she couldn’t. Her eyes closed and that was all she knew until her phone alarm went at 7 a.m.

  She dragged herself into consciousness. Did she have to feed the puppies? Then she remembered. The puppies were back with their owners. What she had to do now was drain her cheese.

  She’d remembered about Roy and Barry when she got her first foot to the floor but as the house was silent, she didn’t worry too much. She had to keep focused. She couldn’t be distracted by men with gin-overs.

  She had the quickest shower on record, dragged on some clothes and then hurried into the cheese room. If she made herself a cup of tea she might find all kinds of destruction and have to get involved in tidying up, or making big greasy fry-ups for Roy and Barry. She could do that after she’d dealt with her cheese and was waiting for the courier.

  The cheese room had its customary soothing effect. In here she was in control; she knew what to do. Drunken relatives and their friends were irrelevant. It was all about the milk, the cream and the magic they could create together.

  The cheese was heavenly, she decided. There was no other word for it. It tasted like the very best clotted cream and although it was rich, its buttery flavour wasn’t cloying because of the hint of tartness right at the end. Although she’d eaten a fair amount of it in her time – she’d worked in an Italian restaurant for a bit – she had never tasted cheese as good as this. Issi was right: the cows and the unique pasture they grazed had produced something really special.

  She wrapped it in several squares of muslin, portioning it out, and then into the large, wide-topped thermoses that Erica had somehow left behind after they did the cheese stall together.

  She was confident, happy even. She would ring the courier.

  Then she remembered that, annoyingly, there was no phone signal. She would have to go back into the house to use the landline. When she got there she found the landline in use.

  ‘Listen, mate!’ Roy was saying forcefully. ‘We need a taxi! And we need it now!’

  Fran practised her breathing, in for five and out for eight – or was it the other way round? Rather than watch Roy insult people over the phone, she went into the kitchen. Issi was there. And she had a cup of tea.

  ‘Can I just have a sip?’ Fran asked, and purloined the mug.

  ‘It’s OK,’ said Issi. ‘Your need is greater than mine. The kettle’s on anyway.’

  ‘So?’ Fran looked around. The kitchen was fairly tidy. ‘I’m assuming they haven’t had breakfast yet.’

  ‘They’ve only just woken, although I’m surprised they’re up and about so early. I can’t decide if I should make them the works, including some black pudding I got in for Tig, or let them sort themselves out?’

  ‘Tricky. But I think if we gave them a good breakfast it would at least get Barry out of our hair.’

  ‘They want a taxi to get them to the distillery, where they left their cars. They asked me to take them but I said I don’t drive.’

  Fran was impressed. ‘And they bought that?’

  Issi shrugged. She drove perfectly well. ‘They’re not thinking terribly clearly and I haven’t got a car.’

  ‘Well, I hope they don’t ask me to drive them,’ said Fran, putting toast into the toaster, suddenly starving hungry. ‘I’m going to sort out the courier for my cheese, and then I’m going to bed until further notice.’

  ‘Is the cheese OK?’ Issi handed Fran a fresh mug of tea.

  ‘It’s glorious, Is! Just heaven. I swear you can taste the wild flowers in it – probably pick out the individual ones and name them.’

  ‘Did you keep any back, so we could have some?’

  Fran bumped her palm against her head in frustration. ‘Duh! I should have done. Although there wasn’t a huge amount of it. We could steal some back?’

  ‘No, don’t. This is your big chance. Don’t jeopardise it. Remind me how you’re getting it to London? You don’t have to take it there yourself?’

  ‘No, thank the Lord. I’m really not up for driving to London today. I’m booking a courier. I’ll just go and see if Roy’s off the phone.’

  Roy was off the phone and he didn’t look pleased.

  ‘Hi, Fran!’ It wasn’t so much a greet
ing as delight in seeing a solution to his problem. ‘Can I have your car keys? I can’t get a cab and we need to get my car back from the gin factory.’

  Fran stared at him for a few seconds wondering where he got his effrontery. He was outrageous. ‘No, Roy,’ she said calmly. ‘You cannot have the keys to my car because I expect you’re still over the limit. Now I’m going to use the phone and then you can try more taxi firms.’

  She’d put the details Roger had sent on her phone and went upstairs to get it. When she got down again, Roy and Barry were walking out of the back door.

  ‘Oh, they got a taxi, did they? And they’re walking down the track to pick it up at the bottom? Remarkably sensible.’ She said this as she passed the kitchen. ‘And they didn’t have breakfast first?’

  Issi put down the fish slice. ‘No! Just after I’d put a whole lot of bacon into the pan. But I can’t say I’m sorry. Good riddance. And let’s hope Roy stays away for a while.’

  ‘So bacon butties all round, then?’

  Issi nodded. ‘They are my signature dish.’

  Fran’s good mood caused by an absence of guests and the promise of a bacon sandwich vanished when the courier firm Roger had told her to call said they couldn’t come until the afternoon. Her protests produced nothing. She rang Roger, who swore.

  She let him rant for a bit and then suggested they tried another firm.

  ‘We’ve no time to mess about, Fran, we need this cheese by midday. You’ll have to bring it yourself.’

  Fran glanced at her watch. It was nine o’clock. If she set off now she’d just about make it, and Roger was right, unless a courier could come at this very moment, it wouldn’t be there in time. Unless the car had a blue light and neenars and could go through red lights.

  She swore a bit herself and then went to find her breakfast. ‘I can’t believe it, Is. I’ve got to drive up to London myself and take the cheese. There’s no alternative.’ She eyed the bacon sandwich sitting on a plate. ‘Can that be my one? Then I must be off.’

  ‘But you’re so tired?’

  ‘I know, but needs must. I’ll be OK on the way there, I expect. Then I’ll park somewhere and have a nap before going home. What a nightmare.’ She took a bite of sandwich, her teeth going through the softness of the bread, the butter and then the crisp saltiness of the bacon. ‘That is so delicious.’