The Country Lovers

by Walker, Fiona

  The freckled face coloured, eyes bright, listening to the babble in the classrooms, the loud, amused voice of the teachers, the shared laughter and chatter. They looked at each other in a brief, unguarded moment, skirted by pegs at hip height, and friendship clicked.

  ‘I have the gut thing today, too,’ Pax said incredulously.

  ‘Trust it,’ Bridge urged, although looking at her, she did worry Pax might be feeling a bit dyspeptic. She looked as if she was going hot and cold, her cheeks red-stained now, dizziness in her eyes.

  ‘I shouldn’t trust myself with anything today.’ She turned to look at the art on the walls, hallucinogenic interpretations of Van Gogh’s Starry Night.

  When they finally located Reception’s classroom, the children that Bridge had seen lined up in clean smocks half an hour earlier had mutated into sand-crusted, paint-splattered Picassos, devoting their creative talents to brightly coloured grainy masterpieces. Despite big plastic smocks, paint dripped from hands and faces, and their form teacher had a Frida Kahlo-monobrow paint smudge.

  ‘We’re experimenting with texture,’ the teacher announced cheerfully, stepping back as a small boy charged past trailing red sand. ‘Walk, Ellis Turner! Picasso walked! Matisse walked. Turners walk.’

  ‘That’s my friend’s boy,’ Bridge told Pax as Ellis apologised and went into an exaggerated tiptoe creep to his easel, making his classmates laugh.

  ‘He’s sweet.’

  ‘Anxious little fella, but he holds it all in. They do, boys, don’t they? You have to turn their lives upside down to let it drop out sometimes.’

  ‘Do you really think so?’ The all-seeing gaze was sharing her headspace again.

  ‘Sure! Why not?’ Bridge focussed hard on all things positive. ‘Works on men, too.’

  Pax looked down, red cheeks now tinged with purple, and for the first time Bridge thought to question why Mr Pax wasn’t here.

  They could still hear blood-curdling war cries coming from the playing fields, just audible over the bongos and science lesson shrieks in neighbouring classrooms and the excited artists clattering and splatting around them. Bridge watched Pax’s gaze follow the colourful little group, the way her natural warmth bubbled up through the polite restraint when a little girl came and tugged at her sleeve, demanding, ‘Who are you?’

  ‘Kes’s mummy.’ She was on her haunches straight away, the girl playing with her amazing hair.

  ‘Who is Kes?’

  ‘I hope you’ll meet him soon.’

  Dropping down beside them, Bridge high-fived the girl, who giggled.

  They watched her skip away, the friendship clicking again.

  Back out in the corridor by the coat pegs, Bridge couldn’t contain her excited astonishment. ‘You’re going to bring Kester here?’

  ‘I’d like him to try it for a day. I’m standing up in my stirrups like you said.’

  Bridge wanted to hug her. They paused by the iMacs again. ‘Sure, it’s a bit of a madhouse.’

  ‘Kes needs noise and chaos,’ Pax had kind creases at the edges of her eyes, ‘not cricket whites and oak-panelled corridors carved with war heroes’ names.’

  ‘Too fecking right!’ Bridge laughed without thinking, then clamped her hand over her mouth. ‘Shit, sorry, I swear I’ve got Tourette’s syndrome. I blame my foul-mouthed da.’

  ‘I inherited Debrett’s syndrome which is far worse.’

  ‘No titles here. Everyone’s equal, comrade.’

  ‘Which is why I’d like Kes to try it out.’ Pax pulled a phone from her pocket and started to type a message with a deft thumb. ‘Thank you so much for showing me around, comrade, you’ve helped enormously.’

  ‘I did nothing.’ Bridge shrugged, delighted. Apart from ignoring every professional jobsworth tick-box red tape bureaucratic guideline I know. Education rocked.

  ‘Oh, you did,’ Pax insisted, thumb still typing. ‘How’s your stomach feeling?’

  ‘Fierce. Yours?’

  ‘Better.’ She sent her message, head tilted, scrutinising Bridge’s face again. ‘You really do remind me of someone.’

  ‘Anyone famous?’ She hoped it would be Lady Gaga or Pink.

  ‘Friend from years back. We shared a house in London. Can we see the Head now?’

  ‘Yes, of course. I’m sure Mrs Bullock will have finished her Very Important Call by now.’ If I’m lucky, she might even remember to interview me. ‘Would you like to come this way, Mrs Forsyth?’

  ‘Mezmasur.’

  Upstairs, Auriol Bullock had repainted her red cross-hatched lips to cover up after a comforting sugar binge, telltale biscuit crumbs in her ruffle neck, the phone still hot and covered in face powder from being pressed to her ear. Beckoning them in, she flipped over a piece of paper covered in handwritten notes and tucked it under a box file. ‘Tell me, how did you find our little slice of paradise, Mrs…?’

  ‘Mrs Forsyth has some good news for you,’ Bridge said helpfully.

  Auriol’s eyes bulged ecstatically from their painted rims when Pax asked how soon Kes could try out a day at the school.

  ‘Like yoga swamis, we pride ourselves in our flexibility here at Maggers.’

  ‘I’ve got to speak to Kester’s father first.’ Pax glanced at her phone screen again. ‘I’ve messaged him, and if he agrees, Kes can try it out next week if that’s all right?’

  ‘Absolutely! I’ll need you to fill in a form.’ Pulling down a big box file marked New Student Primary Admissions, she opened it to reveal some old copies of The Educator magazine and half a bottle of Courvoisier. ‘Ah! Just need to print some new ones off.’ She groped for her glasses, stooping over the computer. ‘Oh bother, it’s locked. Where’s that password again?’

  Bridge discreetly pushed her diary towards her. After Auriol made several failed attempts inputting the password, she did that for her too.

  ‘Thank you, Ms Mazur. In fact, could you stay and take Mrs Forsyth’s details too?’

  ‘You’ll need my CRB and DBS checks verified along with making a formal job offer and receiving acceptance before I can process data,’ Bridge reeled off. Her wretched swollen lip was giving her an ever-worsening lisp. ‘I shouldn’t be showing prospective parents around unaccompanied either.’

  Mrs B drew her closer, whispering, ‘If you want this job, consider yourself screened and working,’ then aloud, ‘Do use my desk and perhaps Mrs Forsyth would like a coffee?’ She gesticulated towards an old-fashioned filter machine puttering toxically in the corner. ‘I’m just popping out to check on the little people and have a quick word with my staff. Back in five!’ As she left, Bridge distinctly heard a hissed yesssss from the corridor.

  ‘I think I just got the job,’ she told Pax, in a shocked undertone.

  ‘Congratulations.’

  ‘That’s batshit, that is. This day is so turning out to be fecking weird. Like I’m drunk or something, you know?’

  Pax smiled awkwardly. ‘I might have that coffee.’

  The coffee, which had evaporated its way to bitter caramel, tasted vile.

  ‘We’ll have a pod machine, plus Rooibos and peppermint tea on offer by half-term,’ Bridge promised, adding a slick of UHT milk from a plastic capsule into the cup before handing it across. ‘And frothed, filtered milk.’

  ‘It’s honestly delicious.’ Pax gulped some, fielding an incoming message on her phone and frowning, thumb firing off an immediate reply, then glancing out of the window at her car, in which, Bridge remembered, Luca O’Brien was sitting like Parker awaiting Lady Penelope. Intriguing.

  ‘This won’t take long.’ Behind Mrs Bullock’s screensaver, she found an open Google search for chiropodists in Chipping Hampton. The computer’s files were a predictable bomb site, but she tracked down what she needed quickly enough, pulling up the official-looking form. ‘Can I start with your son’s full birth name?’

  ‘Oliver Alexander Jocelyn Forsyth.’ The deep voice tightened.

  ‘Not Kester?’ Bridge looked up in surprise.r />
  ‘Names were never my husband’s strong point. He registered the birth.’ Pax had a sweet laugh, but her eyes betrayed her, that flash of honesty women recognised in each other. Bad things had happened.

  ‘I’ll put Kester as his given name, then,’ Bridge whizzed on kindly, her sensors on high alert. ‘What’s his date of birth?’

  It was two years and a day earlier than Bridge’s chunky monkey Flavia’s, her beautiful girl whose father had wanted to call her Jakub even after the three-month scan revealed that their firstborn was unlikely to ever score for Arsenal’s premiership male team. Aleš’s obvious disappointment that she wasn’t a son still maddened Bridge, one of her husband’s shortcomings that she stewed over in the early hours, woken by his snoring and unable to get back to sleep.

  ‘Address?’

  ‘That’s rather complicated. Kes’s father and I only separated last week so we’ve not entirely sorted the living arrangements out yet.’ Pax’s eyes gleamed – was that tears or elation? – and Bridge had to bite back a ‘fecking hell’. It made complete sense. The lay-by phone calls; being at the stud so often; the change of school; the electricity coming off her that was strangely uplifting, almost redemptive.

  ‘Changing his school is terribly bad timing, I know, but…’

  ‘We’ve a Walsh family saying: “There’s no such thing as bad timing, just timing. And the clock’s ticking”,’ Bridge had carefully edited out two feckings.

  ‘I like that.’ Pax made a valiant attempt at a bright smile. ‘Thank you.’

  Fearing her professionalism was already so highly compromised that her Chartered Institute of Logistics and Transport Office Manager of the Year 2015 would be stripped from her bedroom mantelpiece, she resisted the urge to draw her chair closer in sisterly support and ask how they were all coping, ears wagging.

  Typing in two different addresses for Kester’s parents, Bridge sensed that today’s bureaucratic form-filling in a small village school office was Pax Forsyth’s Magna Carta. For all her careful, politic answers, hers was plainly a war-torn motherhood. And with every answer, she seemed to grow brighter, bolder, to claim ownership of a boy she’d only seen through the refracted lens of an unhappy marriage, her son’s five years on an open file: religion, ethnicity, disabilities, behavioural issues. Bridge, who had handled personal data throughout her career, felt like she was gathering something far more intimate than facts: pieces of a relationship that was being liberated. Pax’s independence was so new, it was as though she had to remind herself every few minutes that she was in control of her life, her ever-lifting mood catching as they covered meal preference (‘he’ll eat whatever the school serves and finish off everyone else’s’) and image permission (‘you can try, but it’ll be blurred because he won’t stand still’).

  ‘Mode of transport to school: private car, car share, taxi, bicycle, bus, walking?’

  ‘Is there a plane and tank option?’ she laughed. ‘Kes travels everywhere in an imaginary one or the other. Put walk, although we’ll have a screaming match about it.’

  Bridge found it hard to imagine jazz-voiced Pax shouting at anyone. ‘Does Kes have a nut allergy?’

  ‘Only if they have broccoli attached.’ Pax was looking out of the window. Following her gaze, Bridge saw the blond, bearded Horsemaker – a tousle-haired Zeus – now out of the little car, pacing around impatiently.

  She was dying to know what was going on there. Just wait until the Bags heard about it.

  ‘Won’t keep you much longer,’ she promised, typing the stud’s address again in the Emergency Contact section. ‘It’s a beautiful place you have there; I’ve always admired it from a distance.’ Lay it on, Bridge. ‘It must be amazing inside.’

  ‘Come over and I’ll show you around if you like,’ Pax offered obligingly.

  ‘I might just take you up on that!’ That would put Petra’s nose thoroughly out of joint, she thought, saving the file and locating the printer which was spewing out hard copies. ‘That’s us done if you’ll just sign it here. I’m free to come to yours any time.’

  ‘Perhaps you could bring along the friend and her boy who’s in Reception?’ Pax suggested, signing with an exaggerated, swirly P and F. ‘One afternoon next week after pickup if you like? It would be lovely for Kes to meet one of his classmates before he tries a day here.’ She stood up and shrugged on her coat.

  ‘It’s a date! I’ll walk you to your car.’ On a roll and now hopeful of an introduction to the Horsemaker. Today was turning out to be vintage.

  ‘Don’t come out in the cold.’ Pax turned with a firm handshake in the little front reception. ‘Thank you, Mesmazur. You live up to your magical name.’

  Glowing happily, lip throbbing gently, Bridge bounded back upstairs to write her own contract, texting Aleš first, Got the job! He replied instantly with a row of smiley faces and aubergines.

  *

  Pax felt supercharged, zinging with strong coffee and rare high spirits. Today’s ‘I’m free’ headrush was hardcore, wired to the mains, Luca yet again uncomfortably close witness to it.

  ‘I’m probably completely mad,’ she laughed as they set off. ‘I think the Head has early onset dementia, the new secretary’s plans for world domination start with the filing cabinet, and the children are all feral, but it feels right.’

  ‘Where am I going?’ He was driving too fast, eager to get on.

  Pax longed to send him back to the stud but couldn’t face the fight. She might not yet be legal to drive. She probably wasn’t in the best state to make life-changing decisions for her son or face her in-laws either, but she was too ebullient to care. ‘Follow the signs to Broadbourne. I’ll text to make sure they’re back.’ She started to type the message, adding, ‘I’m really so grateful for this.’

  ‘The place certainly cheered you up.’

  The soft voice had a sanctimonious edge she let pass, unable to contain her enthusiasm. ‘That little school, for all its chaos, is just the sort of positive environment Kes needs. The schools I went to were just like the one he hates, and I hated them too, especially when we got older and were sent away to board. I was always bullied: about my mother, my hair, my deep voice, my big feet, you name it. I was miles from home and lonely, and I loathed all the one-upmanship and toadying. I remember swearing that my own children would be state educated, but when it came to Kes, Mack overruled me and my grandfather backed him up.’

  Pax felt in control for the first time in months. She’d even made a new friend. ‘He needs to learn to be a kid again, you know? Like that grey beast of Mummy’s needs to remember how to be a horse. And I need to relearn how to be…’ She hesitated, realising saying a woman might be misconstrued.

  ‘Sober?’

  Again, she let his moralising wash over her. ‘If you want, I can lock all the bottles of plum gin in the tack room safe and give you the key when we get back, Luca. I’m not screwing this up for Kes. He’ll suit that little school, I know it.’

  She could almost feel her feathers lifting from depression’s oil slick, her urge to fly towards blue sky overwhelming.

  ‘So you’re planning on sticking around at the stud, then?’ he asked, eyes fixed on the road.

  ‘Don’t worry, Father O’Brien, I’ll keep out of your way.’

  ‘I don’t want you to do that.’ He looked across at her. ‘I want you to come with me to an Alcoholics Anonymous meeting.’

  ‘Take a right turn here.’ She didn’t want to think about it. ‘Why are we stopping?’

  He pulled into a passing place and cut the engine, silencing the booming bass from the stereo as he turned to her, the smile gone. ‘I know you think I’m a pain in the arse, but I won’t let this drop.’

  ‘Fine! I’ll go to one.’ She wouldn’t.

  ‘You won’t.’

  ‘Did you?’

  ‘A couple of times, before I left Canada.’

  ‘Mack had a friend who went through Gamblers Anonymous. He had go and ask forgiveness from eve
ryone he’d hurt through betting, like a door-to-door salesman.’

  ‘That’s not until step nine or ten.’

  ‘How many are there?’

  ‘Twelve.’

  ‘Isn’t it a bit excessive? I just want to cut down.’

  ‘Your husband is almost certainly going to accuse you of alcohol dependence in order to get custody of your son, am I right?’

  She nodded, getting his point, the phone in her hand a loaded gun of texts from Mack, quick to disavow her of the idea their son would try out Compton Magna’s primary school, starting with You must accept that he’s coming to live in Scotland and most recently NOT HAPPENING! Just reading them made her hands clench in need of two big vodkas, one to drink and the other to throw in his face. She was determined to prove him wrong, although praying for God’s absolution from Absolut with Luca O’Brien was surely a step too far.

  ‘Luca, I really appreciate what you’re trying to do, but there’s no way I can stand up in front of a room of strangers and say, “My name is Patricia Forsyth and I’m an alcoholic. Here is my story…” It’s like asking me to take my clothes off.’ Then she remembered she’d done just that in front of Luca whilst drunk. The car suddenly felt very small and her face very hot.

  ‘You can just listen. I didn’t tell anyone my story.’

  ‘Is it that bad?’

  He didn’t answer and it occurred to her that Luca might not be telling her the whole truth, that as a self-confessed drunk he knew all the same cover-ups she did. ‘How do I know you’ve really stopped?’

  ‘Because I’ve not had a drink in a fortnight?’

  ‘You could still be boozing on the sly too; I could be trapped with the Keith Moon of County Kildare here.’

  ‘I’m not,’ he snapped. ‘Is this Keith Moon fella a family friend or something?’

  She was surprised at his sharpness. ‘He was The Who’s drummer.’

  He looked blank.

  ‘You know the song “My Generation”?’ Pax sang a few lines, stopping before the bit about hoping to die before growing old in case he used it as leverage. ‘My brother wanted it played at our father’s funeral, but the grandparents put the boot in, insisting on “Abide With Me”. He drove a Rolls Royce into a swimming pool.’