The Country Lovers

by Walker, Fiona

  ‘Start thinking fast.’

  ‘Or what?’

  ‘You don’t want to know.’

  ‘Try me.’

  ‘You really want to find out?’

  They were straight into action movie dialect, Carly realised, stepping in beside Bridge who was telling them to pack it in, or at least take it elsewhere.

  ‘There are kids here,’ Bridge hissed.

  Luca was still reeling a wild accompaniment nearby, the crowd around him clapping in time, the handsome stand-in bodhran player thundering in time.

  ‘You’d better watch yourself, mate.’

  ‘Watch YOU make a FOOL OF YOURSELF, you mean.’

  ‘Move this somewhere quieter!’ Carly backed up Bridge, pointing at the furthest end of the orchard behind the younger trees, amazed to see the two men doing as they were told, walking sideways like huge, fierce crabs so they could keep goading each other.

  Hurriedly calling over Turner teens to keep an eye on the children, Carly followed with Bridge.

  ‘You don’t want to cross me, mate,’ Ash was snarling.

  ‘Says who?’

  ‘The last one to cross me.’

  ‘Cross me and you won’t be talking for a long time.’

  Grabbing Carly’s hand, Bridge breathed, ‘It’s like a bad fecking episode of EastEnders.’

  ‘I was thinking Terminator.’

  ‘How do we stop them?’

  ‘I’ve no idea.’

  In a clearing, their husbands were ratcheting up the rhetoric, two fighting cocks pecking and scratching their way towards an inevitable feather-flying death match. A small crowd including Auriol had come across with them to follow the action.

  ‘You’ll regret this.’

  ‘Not as much as you.’

  ‘I don’t think so.’

  ‘Dream on.’

  Bridge held Carly’s hand tighter. ‘Where do they learn that shit?’

  ‘They’re almost there,’ she realised anxiously. ‘Ash will throw a punch soon.’

  ‘Do they even know what they’re arguing about?’

  ‘Us.’

  ‘Sorry.’

  ‘Me too.’

  They hugged tightly. At that moment, Ash got the green light he’d been looking for all week as his adversary pulled off his woolly hat, crossed his huge arms and demanded, ‘You want to FIGHT?’

  As they drew back fists, an upright figure in a camel-hair coat stepped between them. ‘Now, now, boys, we’re not the Very Angry Ladybird, are we?’

  ‘Oh shit!’ Carly rushed forwards.

  But Bridge was quicker. Realising her new boss was about to get crushed, she hurled herself through the air to rugby tackle Auriol to safety. Brushing her down afterwards, she turned back to pull in Carly beside her. ‘Ladies, we need to be more strategic. I’ll go first. I did Taekwondo for ten years.’

  The husbands were in a body lock, each trying to wrestle the other to the ground, both grunting and swearing furiously.

  ‘Stop now or I’m going to kick you!’ Bridge threatened.

  ‘Scary stuff,’ Flynn chuckled behind them.

  She growled furiously, lowering her centre of balance, adopting a martial art pose.

  ‘Keep out of this, kochanie.’ Aleš landed a fist in Ash’s ribs.

  ‘I won’t warn you again!’

  ‘Fuck off, darling,’ Ash dismissed, cracking his elbow into Aleš’s eye socket.

  ‘Ew!’ Bridge and Carly looked away, unable to watch.

  There was a loud whack as Aleš head-butted Ash.

  Carly looked again, catching Ash uppercut the Pole’s big bearded chin with an audible crack.

  ‘I will fucking kill you!’

  ‘Right, that’s it. Heeaagh!’ Bridge spun, one leg high as a ballet dancer, heel smacking hard across the back of her husband’s neck. He went down like a felled tree. Swinging again, she angled her foot at the critical last moment to clout Ash on the jaw.

  ‘Fuck! That hurt!’ He reached up and stroked it.

  ‘Ow!’ She was hopping around on one leg. ‘Are you made of fecking steel or what? I think I might have broken it.’ She sank to the ground to examine her heel.

  Carly hurried to Bridge’s side. ‘You okay?’

  ‘It’s nothing, queen,’ she said, grimacing, tears in her eyes. ‘Have they stopped?’

  ‘They will.’

  Aleš was lumbering back up again, looking like an enraged rhino, Ash eyeing him, ready to pounce.

  Carly stormed between them. ‘Will you both STOP. THIS. NOW. Or you’re not getting fed or fucked for a month, understand?’

  ‘Touché!’ Bridge rallied, hopping back up. ‘No food, no sex and I’ll raise you no laundry or childcare.’

  ‘Oh, bravo!’ Auriol cheered from the sidelines.

  Behind Carly, Flynn muttered, ‘What’s so unusual in that?’

  Ash and Aleš turned away from each other, arms up, conceding an angry, resentful ceasefire, trying to look like it was all a joke.

  ‘Now shake fecking hands!’ shouted Bridge, and to both women’s amazement they did.

  ‘Us too,’ she muttered sheepishly to Carly, holding hers out. ‘I’m truly sorry, queen. When I get a cob on, there’s no fecking stopping me.’

  ‘That kick was bloody brilliant.’ Carly hugged her again. ‘I can’t believe Aleš went straight down like that.’

  ‘He had to.’ Bridge winked, stooping to pick up her husband’s discarded woolly hat. ‘Ash would have made him look a much bigger fecking mug than I just did.’

  ‘You mean he…?’ She started to laugh, realising the big man had staged the fall like a footballer.

  ‘That was quite marvellous!’ Auriol hurried forwards. ‘Would you both be interested in running some female empowerment and self-defence workshops together for my Year Six girls?’

  ‘And there was me thinking you were going to fire me for public affray before I even started.’ Bridge looked hugely relieved.

  ‘Quite the opposite,’ Auriol insisted. ‘You are the jewel in Maggers’ crown, Ms Mazur.’

  ‘Does that mean we can have the coffee pod machine after all?’

  Leaving them to it, Carly made her way to Ash who gave her a suspicious look, still simmering just below boiling point.

  ‘Don’t try that number on me again,’ he warned.

  ‘This isn’t your fight, bae, you know that. Keep your powder dry, hey?’

  He set his jaw, looking sideways at her, wise enough to let it rest when physical and sexual starvation were threatened this close to a family bout.

  She looked sideways back. ‘You’re a dark horse. Army first-aid training came in useful, then?’

  His eyebrows curled questioningly, then he remembered. ‘Yeah, your mate was in a bit of a mess that day.’

  ‘My hero.’ She reached up to his face and he responded with a long, hard kiss.

  Something still bothered Carly. ‘So why’d she want Skully’s number?’

  ‘Turf,’ he said smoothly, nodding in the direction of Bridge who was walloping Aleš with his woolly hat. ‘Ask her yourself.’

  Carly let it go. She also needed to keep her powder dry if, as she suspected, Skully dealt his in small packages. She’d see him off eventually.

  Ash’s brows had lowered, his expression darkening. ‘I’m still not happy about you working for Percys.’

  ‘It’s just a few hours at weekends. There are no Percys there any more, Ash. The family name died out. Turners rule this village, remember?’

  ‘Riverdance boy is coming nowhere near you.’

  ‘That story’s so fake. Luca’s soft as a puppy. You’ll like him. Total non-threat. I’ll introduce you.’ Carly knew she was laying it on a bit thick. What she would never admit to a soul was the seed of truth in Bridge’s accusation. There was something about Luca she couldn’t quite shake from her head.

  But when they walked back, the wassail singers had launched into another folk anthem, hurdy-gurdy player spinning enthus
iastically. Carly scanned the orchard. Luca had long gone.

  *

  ‘If he knocks we’ll open it. Otherwise silence, understood?’

  Dogs to either side, Pax sat with her back against the wall in Lester’s cottage hallway, feeling the sisal doormat scratching through the cotton of her pyjama bottoms, raking her hair back with her fingers.

  ‘There’s no such thing as bad timing, just timing,’ she whispered. ‘And the clock’s ticking.’

  She was, she realised, behaving slightly – very – madly. Feeling increasingly as if she’d lost her mind tonight along with her heart and quite a lot of dignity, she didn’t trust herself. It was uncomfortably like being drunk. The toughest night for staying sober had left her breathless, unable to sit still, her thoughts in a vortex. Nothing settled her. She’d let Laurence play, later walked round the yard with the dogs, tried to watch television and then read. She was just killing time, she’d realised. She must stop killing time. So she’d put on some washing and started Sellotaping the love letters back together for Lester, working forensically. She treated it as a jigsaw puzzle she must solve, not reading more than the sentences she was matching up at a time, not prying into the story that was a part of a private past, and yet in her own way becoming familiar with it. Having it in her hands made her feel better about things, accepting the simple truth of her father’s greatest love and its concealment, the reactionary prejudice in this corner of country life not so very different even today. There’s no such thing as bad timing, just timing.

  Feeling cold, she’d gone upstairs to fetch another layer, pulling a heavy jumper from a drawer to find the breeches that her mother had bought her tucked beneath it. Through the little casement window, bright as an apple slice was the waxing half-moon, a week away from its full wolf face. It had made her think of Lester, still carrying his lost love.

  I would give every star in the sky to see it.

  That’s when she’d heard singing, drawing the curtain and killing the lights before taking up her position by the front door.

  She closed her eyes as she recognised ‘My Langan Love’.

  *

  ‘Her welcome, like her love for me,’ sang Luca,

  Is from her heart within;’

  He pitched left.

  ‘Her warm kiss is felicity

  That knows no taint of sin.’

  He pitched right.

  ‘And, when I stir my foot to go,

  Tis leaving love and light’

  Centre line, change of leg at X.

  ‘To feel the wind of longing blow

  From out the dark of night.’

  Luca might be having difficulty waking in a straight line, but compared to his hard-drinking heyday he was barely over the yardarm. And to his monumental relief he’d found he could stop, hold his hand up and walk away from the offers to make a night of it, promises that his drinks would be free, his supper sung for. He wanted to whoop, to stand on a fence rail and shout to the valley, ‘Look at me, I am calling it a night and it’s early evening!’

  From the first drop to now, his greatest fear had been that of gathering momentum like a meteor, the out-of-control drinking that always ended in unconsciousness. The drinks had kept coming when he played, still pressed on him after he’d decided he’d had enough. It had made him feel feather light and intoxicatingly exhilarated again, his fingers only able to remember their way through the tunes at top speed when his head was spinning too fast to think. That he had turned and walked away afterwards without a second glance almost shocked him.

  He didn’t end up in a ditch. Nor did he try to serenade Pax’s dark, curtained cottage windows. He’d handed the violin back for a start, and she’d made it clear enough that she had no desire for his half-cut company. The memory of opening his eyes from a kiss that had nourished his soul only to see her racing off across a field wasn’t a great one.

  He went to check on Beck and the other horses, realising from the amount of hay in nets and the fresh water with no strands it that she’d already been round.

  He turned back to look at the cottage. He wanted to know she was okay, but he could feel himself swaying a bit now that he was standing still.

  Beck watched him, the insomniac who missed nothing. His neighbours were asleep, old Cruisoe curled up in deep shavings with his gold and black legs tucked underneath him, the little Shetland flat out, his big stomach like a fluffy white snow mound in straw.

  Luca’s phone found the signal sweet spot with a buzz and he checked how many times the Unknown Number had called. Twenty. Still no messages. His battery was on its last gasp.

  He went back to feed Beck a mint. ‘Have you been involved in an accident that wasn’t your fault?’ He impersonated a recorded telemarketing voice. ‘Sure I haff.’ He tried a German accent with a vague recognition that he must be wasted to wisecrack at a horse. ‘Can I haff ze compensation if some Scheisskerl tried to taser me und lame me for life? Shut up, Luca.’ He marched out onto the yard, slapped his arms and face to try to sober up, to shake the menacing vision of a black-windowed car sliding up the drive, Mishaal stepping out, bringing with him a white-coated vet with a lethal injection, a brace of heavies with sledgehammers and his new bride with a shotgun for good measure.

  He rubbed his face. ‘One more day and he’ll be thousands of miles away. It’s all cool.’

  He headed unsteadily towards the house.

  ‘Wouldn’t be able to walk along the white lines on the road tonight officer, no.’

  It took all his willpower not to knock on the cottage door. Pax must have gone to bed. It was still early, but there was no light on. That had to be a big, lonely bed. They could talk. No funny business, she was too fragile. He liked talking to Pax. He could tell her about Mishaal.

  ‘Fuck, no.’ He forced himself to walk on, knowing that more than anything he just wanted to kiss her again.

  Then he turned back, reeling round further than he intended. He had to see Pax. Recrossing the yard, he stood on her doorstep, taking a few deep breaths to steady his nerves and spinning head. There was a low, gruff bark from just inside as Stubbs identified a prowler.

  About to knock, Luca stopped himself. Was that what Pax would think he was too? Luca prowling around in his cups? It was how he was behaving. He held a position of trust here, had a job to do, must stop thinking about himself. This matters a whole load more than you feeling thirsty, he reminded himself. He heard his Canadian former boss yelling in his head, ‘Keep your bloody pants on, boy.’

  Stubbs barked louder, there was movement in the hallway beyond the door.

  Had he said that aloud? In a Canadian accent?

  He turned and hurried away.

  Lined up outside the back door to the main house were four wooden boxes crammed with bottles of plum gin. There was a note:

  Thank you for keeping my sobriety. I’m sorry you lost yours a little.

  Pax.

  He carried it upstairs, tucked it under his pillow and stared up into the beamed eaves of his attic room, wondering if he’d ever sleep. A half-moon was brightening his row of little casement windows and throwing shadow blades across the ceiling.

  The drink was his sedative, a lullaby of heavy-headed breaths seeing him into slumber curled beside the imaginary warmth of a woman until the early hours, when he woke from a fitful dream in which Mishaal was hunting down Beck, a great circus whip in his hand that he cracked overhead as he ripped through the stud’s fields on a black Arab horse in tasselled Bedouin finery.

  Luca took a moment to adjust, to tell himself it was a dream. The moon-shadow daggers on the ceiling had moved and were pointing at him now.

  Then he realised he could hear hooves hurtling out in one of the fields, an urgent shout. Nothing was turned out overnight. Did they have an intruder? His first thought was Beck.

  He stumbled out of bed, pulling on jeans, hurrying to the window, his heart full throttle.

  A horse and rider were thundering around the biggest of t
he hay fields.

  The moonlight was at half strength, but he recognised them straight away: the horse compact and short-coupled with a hogged neck like a truss arch, its rider standing in her stirrups and punching the air, a stream of wild red mane flying behind her.

  Heartbeat slowly returning to normal, he watched as she cantered the willing little cob in huge loops, skirting along the treeline, then back out across the field, a teardrop to turn back on herself, a showman’s gallop alongside the rail and then back to trot to bring the horse slowly down, raining huge pats on his neck before pulling up and slumping forwards to hug him. Even at this distance, Luca could feel the sheer unfettered joy.

  Tonight, he was jealous of a horse.

  PART FIVE

  19

  Pax was accustomed to Luca not saying much first thing, but this morning he was beyond taciturn, earphones in, eyes averted. He had to be seriously hungover, she guessed.

  Having barely slept, stiffly bow-legged from her late-night ride, she wasn’t feeling too sociable either, grateful they’d established a routine early on, working a stable yard apart most of the morning shift. At the first opportunity, she took Knott and Stubbs and up to the top field to call and see how Kes was doing.

  ‘Compton Magna Primary School.’ Bridge’s phone voice was so ultra-assured – like a Radio Four news announcer – that Pax didn’t recognise her.

  ‘This is Kes Forsyth’s mum.’

  ‘Pax, queen!’ The professionalism was short-lived. ‘How are ya? Don’t blame you taking off last night. That was fierce. Such a shame the little fella’s not well today. Have you called to rearrange?’

  ‘Not well?’

  ‘His granny rang not five minutes ago. Touch of tummy wobbles, she says. We can try for Friday instead if that suits you?’

  Thanking her, Pax phoned the Forsyths, finally tracking Mairi down on her mobile. Pax could hear a car engine.

  ‘How is he? Are you taking him to the doctor?’

  ‘He’s feeling fine now, thank you, Tish. He’d just got a wee chill from standing about in that cold orchard. In fact, he’s so much better we thought we’d treat him to Sea Life Centre.’

  ‘Is Mack with you?’