Other Countries

by Jo Bannister

  Ash stared at him. ‘It’ll take me about half an hour.’ He looked critically around the little sitting room. ‘You’d better do some housework, in case I can persuade Hazel to come back with me.’

  But Saturday had no intention of being left behind. He didn’t even argue: he just said, ‘I’m coming,’ in a tone which left no room for doubt.

  ‘All right,’ growled Ash. ‘But you’ll have to stay in the car. I don’t want you and Ford coming to blows again. There’s no reason for this to turn nasty. I just want to talk to Hazel, and bring her home if I can. I want to get her away from him for long enough to have a proper talk, make sure she isn’t being coerced into doing anything she doesn’t want to. She’s a grown woman; if she wants to go back to him, there’s nothing we can do to stop her. But I want to be sure it is what she wants, not just what he wants.’

  ‘I’ll stay in the car,’ Saturday agreed readily. But he winked at Patience when Ash’s back was turned.

  Hazel tried to call Diego to see if her car was ready. But her phone was still on strike, and now it seemed Ford’s was too. She saw no alternative to going into Norbold and seeing the mechanic in person.

  Ford said he would drive her, later. He was busy in his study. She drifted round the garden dead-heading the last of the flowers. Then she put together the makings of lunch, and then she went to see how long he was going to be.

  ‘Can we go tomorrow?’ he said. ‘I’m in the middle of this.’

  Hazel frowned. ‘Tomorrow’s Sunday – he won’t be there. We’ll be back in an hour. I feel stranded without my car. It must be ready by now.’

  Ford shrugged, almost without looking up. ‘We’ll run into Norbold on Monday, then – collect the car, get some lunch, maybe do a bit of shopping. All right?’

  Hazel breathed heavily at him. ‘Oliver, I’ve hardly been out of this house for days. It’s a beautiful house, but I don’t want to spend all my time in it. I need my car back. Whatever it is you’re doing, it can wait for an hour. Take me into Norbold and come straight back. If Diego’s still working on the car, someone will give me a lift. In fact, I want to see my superintendent about getting back to work, and Saturday morning’s a good time to catch her. So I can beg a lift out with the area car afterwards.’

  That made Ford turn round. He looked surprised and a little annoyed. ‘You want to go back to work? Why?’

  She scowled at him. ‘Because it’s my job, and I’m fit to do it! I have been for weeks. The longer I put it off, the harder it’s going to feel.’

  ‘Then don’t go back.’ Ford seemed to think it was the obvious answer. ‘It’s not as if we need the money.’

  ‘Money isn’t the only reason to work! I like my job. I like feeling useful.’

  ‘And you don’t feel useful here?’

  ‘Since you ask,’ she retorted, ‘no. You’re preoccupied with your work – which is fine, that’s how it should be. But what am I supposed to do? I haven’t the patience for cross-stitch samplers! I’m a police officer. I should be breaking up fights outside pubs. I should be seeing old ladies across busy roads, and stopping the Mugford twins from riding home on any bicycle they find that’s not actually nailed down. I should be getting on with my life!’

  Ford looked slowly round the room. ‘You don’t consider this part of your life?’

  ‘A part, yes! I enjoy being with you, Oliver, you know that. I like this house – I don’t even mind living in the middle of the last Wild Wood in England! But it’s not a whole life. I have a job. I have friends. I should check that Saturday hasn’t burnt down Railway Street trying to dry his socks on the toaster. I need to go into town, and I want to do it this morning. I want you to put your work aside for as long as it takes to drive me into Norbold. Is that so very much to ask?’

  Ford turned his gaze from Hazel to the screen of his computer. Then with a sigh he turned back, swivelling his chair to look her full in the face. He held his hands out, palms up, to either side of him – as if, Hazel thought inconsequentially, he was carrying a baguette. He rocked them slightly.

  ‘It’s like this. You want to go to town, I want to work on my book. Town, book.’ The baguette rocked some more. ‘You want to pick up your little run-about, and check on your grubby little lodger, and find out why your services aren’t considered indispensable by Norbold police, and I want to complete a book which my publishers are waiting for, which will hopefully form the basis of a new TV series, and which should over the next couple of years bring in several cheques with lots of zeros on them. So I put it to you, Hazel – which do you think is the most important? Running you into town, or working on my book? Honestly?’

  ‘Honestly?’ She set her jaw. ‘Right now, Oliver, I would honestly say that the most important thing you could be working on is our relationship. Another hour is neither here nor there to your publishers. If you’ve got behind with your work, you need to catch up – but you need to do it at another time. Burn the midnight oil tonight. Get up with the larks tomorrow. But right now, I need you to show me some consideration. If you want this relationship to work, you have to make time for me as well. And I need some of that time right now.’

  His frown turned imperious, as if she were a minion who had spoken back to him or a cheeky child. ‘Don’t give me ultimatums.’

  She wasn’t prepared to back down. ‘I shouldn’t have to, Oliver. It should be obvious to you that people who think enough of one another to set up home together will have certain expectations of each other. I shouldn’t have to ask for your help – you should know when it’s needed and offer it.’

  Ford gave a cold laugh. ‘Not that old chestnut! “If you really loved me I wouldn’t have to tell you how I feel.” You disappoint me, Hazel. Whatever happened to the feminist revolution? You really ought to decide which side you’re on. It’s ridiculous to insist that you’re as strong, as capable and as worth your salt as any man, but play the china doll whenever you don’t get your own way.’

  Hazel felt herself flushing with anger. She was angry, and upset, and offended, and on top of that she was astonished. She doubted there was a woman in England who was less like a china doll than she was. At thirteen her mother had called her an outrageous tomboy. She probably wouldn’t have modified that opinion much if she’d lived to see her daughter at twenty-seven.

  It was already too late for a snappy retort. Hazel bridled her anger long enough to formulate exactly what she wanted to say – to get her ducks in line – with the firm intention that something had to change right now. Either Ford’s attitude or Hazel’s home address, and at this precise moment she didn’t care which. She was exhausted by the emotional buffeting that came with loving Oliver Ford. He professed his fondness for her, then set about changing everything about her. How she looked, how she dressed, how she lived. He’d claimed to feel as strongly about her as she felt about him – had he ever used the word love? – had she? – but this wasn’t the first time he’d turned a perfectly ordinary domestic situation into an unpleasant confrontation.

  Not the first time …

  Hazel let the ducks wander off about their business while she regarded Ford with narrowed eyes. ‘Oliver – is this one of your jokes?’

  He appeared to give that some thought. Then he drew a world-weary hand across his eyes. ‘Do you know, I suppose it is. A joke that got out of hand. All of it. It’s a very middle-aged-man thing to do, isn’t it? – take up with a young girl and set about turning her into something that she’s not. Elegant, sophisticated. Because those are things that you can produce, that you can create, and she already has the one thing that you can’t – youth. I suppose it’s a last gesture of defiance before the sands of time start sucking at your feet.’

  He scowled. ‘It’s a little pathetic, when you think about it. Trying to avoid growing older by changing someone else. Into – and this is genuinely ironic – the sort of woman there’s no shortage of in his own age-group. And for what? To make people envy him? As if being successful isn’t
cause enough for envy.

  ‘I don’t need this, Hazel. I don’t need your histrionics. I have important things to think about. I need you to be able to amuse yourself for a few hours while I work. Is that so very much to ask? In return for what I’ve given you? Now, be a good girl and go and – I don’t know – paint your fingernails for a while, and I’ll take you into Norbold when I can spare the time. All right? Oh – you could bring me a coffee first.’

  Hazel was not someone who responded to provocation with violence. She never had been, even before she joined the police – and as a teacher, there had been ample opportunities if the inclination had been there. All the same, if Oliver Ford had been standing up instead of sitting down, she might very well have slapped him.

  She still wasn’t entirely sure that he wasn’t teasing her. In a way it didn’t matter. Whether he was saying these things because he genuinely thought so little of her, or because he considered it funny to make her think so, the inescapable bottom line was that the man she lived with had no compunction about hurting her. The man she slept beside had so little respect for her that he either didn’t notice or didn’t care about the damage he was doing.

  She said nothing. There was nothing she could usefully say. There was no point, and no dignity, in railing at him. She knew now that she’d wasted six weeks of her life – but that wasn’t actually Ford’s fault. He was who he’d been all along: the error was hers in not recognising who that was. She’d been seduced by his manner, his sophistication, his urbanity – all right, perhaps even by his wealth and his fame – and she’d seen only what she wanted to see. She’d made excuses for his selfishness – he was busy, he was tired, he was better at professional relationships than personal ones. She had made allowances for him because she thought she was or at least might be in love; and he had responded by treating her like – like – like a toy. Something to be taken out and played with when he was in the mood, and put back in the box when he had more important things to do.

  She had undoubtedly been foolish, thinking this could be something real, something lasting, when it was clearly nothing more than a passing amusement to Ford. And now it was over. The only question in her mind – a-jangle as it was with how the world had turned widdershins in the space of a few painful minutes – was how best to draw a line under it. Not with a bang; but perhaps not with a whimper either.

  So, silently, she retreated to the kitchen and did as he asked. While the kettle was boiling she went upstairs and put together the few things – her things – she meant to take with her. She left her bag in the hall and finished making his coffee. Thick and strong, the way he liked it, with two spoonfuls of brown sugar, well stirred.

  Then, still without a word, she carried it into the study. He saw her, and smiled, and reached for it.

  She poured it, with slow deliberation, all over the keyboard of his computer.

  TWENTY-SEVEN

  Even with a map, it wasn’t easy to find the house. Roads entered the ancient woodland and seemed to get lost in there, as if it were the Amazon rain forest. Roads seemed to travel through the woods in an approximately straight line but emerge facing the direction they’d come from. One road Ash tried ended in a sink-hole. Someone had helpfully drawn a stop line across it just short of where the worn tarmac broke up and disappeared.

  Finally Saturday spotted a sign tacked to a tree – ‘Purley Grange’, in poker-work almost obliterated by moss – and though the trail it indicated was unmetalled and barely maintained, after a minute the red tile roofs and glittering windows of a substantial house started to peep through breaks in the trees. There was a wrought-iron gate, overswarmed by ivy, and a driveway refreshed by a recent load of gravel, and then they were there.

  It was the sort of house where tradesmen went to the back door. Ash parked the Volvo in front of the main portico, and got out, stretched unhurriedly, and looked around him.

  Then he looked back at the car in astonishment. Patience was snarling.

  Saturday, who was sitting beside her on the back seat, began edging towards the door. ‘What’s wrong with her?’ She wasn’t a big dog. Even Saturday could have lifted her without risking a hernia. But though slender, she was muscular and sinewy, and when she lifted the curtain of her lips the teeth went all the way back to her ears.

  Ash shook his head. ‘I don’t know.’ And he didn’t know why she was behaving like a dog instead of telling him what was wrong. But he couldn’t explain that to Saturday. ‘Let her out.’

  Saturday’s eyebrows expressed misgivings. ‘Are you sure?’

  ‘Let her out. Something’s upset her. I want to know what.’

  The youth opened the rear passenger door. Patience didn’t wait but bounded over him, her slim body arching with greyhound grace, and in a scant three seconds had disappeared round the side of the house. Ash followed at a sharp walk. After a moment he began to run.

  Sight-hounds do not on the whole give tongue as they hunt. But Ash wasn’t a dog expert – Patience was the only one he’d ever owned – and he was alarmed at how quickly she had disappeared both from view and from earshot. He knew the speed she was capable of. By the time he reached the corner she could be anywhere: in the house, in the garden or three fields away. He trusted her not to chase sheep or bite children. He wasn’t sure what she would do when she caught up with whatever had angered her.

  So it came as a relief when he turned the corner of Purley Grange and saw her immediately, sitting on the gravel, her long scimitar tail making patterns like a Japanese gardener’s rake as it wagged, her long pink tongue lolling. Hazel was on one knee beside her, an arm around the dog’s neck.

  ‘We came to the right place, then,’ said Ash.

  That first instinct of relief disappeared the instant Hazel straightened up and turned towards him. She looked dazed and bewildered, and she was bleeding from a two-inch cut under her left eye.

  ‘Gabriel? What are you doing here?’

  It wasn’t just that she was surprised to see him. It wasn’t even the cut, although it was both nasty and fresh. He thought she looked lost. Whatever had just happened, whatever he’d almost stumbled upon, had knocked her sideways, metaphorically as well as literally.

  Though the winter was only one frost away, it wasn’t a cold day. And Hazel wasn’t out here on the gravel in her pyjamas. Still, moved by some instinct of caring, Ash shrugged off his jacket and put it round her; and felt Hazel pull it close about her as if for comfort.

  He wanted to go inside, find Ford and take him apart like jointing a chicken. He wanted to bellow his fury, and heave bricks through the pretty sixteen-pane windows, and gather the girl to his breast where she’d be safe.

  He could keep himself on a tight rein when he had to. He’d had a lot of practice. Instead he took out his handkerchief, checked it was clean and, folding it into a tight pad, put it into her hand. Even then he had to guide it to her face. ‘Hazel – what are you doing here?’

  She looked up at the house. She looked past Ash to where Saturday had finally extricated himself from his seat-belt and lurched round the corner. She lowered the handkerchief from under her eye and looked at the blood on it, as if she wasn’t sure whose it was.

  Finally she sucked in a steadying breath. ‘I’m getting ready to leave.’

  ‘Yes,’ said Ash quietly. ‘That sounds like a good idea.’

  Patience led the way back to the car. But as Ash went to put Hazel inside she hesitated, looked up the steps to the front door. ‘My bag’s in the hall. I won’t be a minute …’

  ‘Damn right you won’t.’ For a moment the anger in his soul vibrated in Ash’s voice. ‘I’ll get it. Is the door locked?’

  ‘No. Gabriel …’

  He turned at the foot of the steps. ‘What?’

  ‘This.’ She gestured at her face. ‘It was an accident.’

  If he started shouting now, he might never be able to stop. ‘Of course it was.’ He went up the steps and opened the front door.

 
; The bag was where she’d said, at the foot of the staircase. Ash passed it with barely a look and continued down the hall, opening doors as he went.

  He found Ford in the kitchen, dabbing at his laptop with a paper towel. He didn’t look round. He must have thought Hazel had come back inside. ‘I have six months’ work on this thing. Six months! You’d better hope I can get it out again.’

  ‘Frankly, Mr Ford,’ Ash said judiciously, ‘it’s immaterial to me whether you can salvage your work or not. Put the laptop down.’

  Startled – he wasn’t expecting a man’s voice – and irritated, Ford spared him a look that turned into a double-take. ‘You? How …?’ But then he abandoned the query as if it wasn’t worth pursuing. ‘If you’re looking for Hazel, she’s in the garden somewhere.’

  ‘Yes. But you’re in here.’

  On television, Oliver Ford looked bigger than he actually was. People who met him for the first time were always a little surprised. He had the presence, the mannerisms of a more substantial man. By contrast, Gabriel Ash tried not to intimidate people with his bear-like frame, made a habit of stooping slightly to minimise the impact he had on those around him. But not today. Pumped up with quiet rage, he loomed over the smaller man.

  ‘You hit her.’

  Ford appeared oblivious of the danger he was in. ‘I didn’t hit her,’ he snarled. ‘The silly bitch spilled coffee on my laptop! I tried to shake it out and she got in the way.’

  Ash was nodding carefully. ‘That’s what she said. That it was an accident.’

  For an instant, no sooner seen than gone, Ford looked puzzled. But he rallied quickly. ‘So what are you doing here?’

  ‘Taking her home.’

  Ford shrugged, turned his attention back to the computer he was holding inverted over the sink. ‘She’s not a prisoner. She can leave any time she wants. But tell her to take her things with her. If she comes back in a few days I may not be here.’

  ‘I’ll tell her.’ Ash was amazed at how calm he sounded. ‘As soon as I’ve done this.’