The Village Fate

by William Hadley

  “I wasn’t sleeping, just resting my eyes.”

  “Pity you weren’t resting your throat,” said Claudilia. “You were snoring like a piglet, and by the way, you’ve been in there for over an hour. I even had to clean out your horse for you.” …first rule of horse husbandry, you do your own mucking out.

  “Okay, I might have nodded off for a moment but back up a bit, who’ll be fine and what’re they going to do?”

  “Hello Mr Macintosh,” said Helen. “actually you looked quite sweet in there. Look, I’ve got a photo.” She giggled as she pulled out her phone and turned the screen for him to see.

  “Okay, as you’ve seen me sleeping I guess you can call me Angus. Now what is it your crazy aunt has in mind.” …Who’s he calling crazy, I only want what’s best for him, and if that means chopping his wife into incy wincy, teeny weeny, bite size bits then so be it - it doesn’t make me crazy.

  “You’re coming riding with us. On Rosie.”

  “Oh no, Can’t I just stand and look at her, she is awfully big.”

  “Don’t be daft, she’s a darling and she’ll take good care of you,” said Claudilia

  “I don’t think I can get on her, I’ll need a step ladder.”

  “Don’t worry, Aunty has a mounting block,” said Helen pointing at a small set of stone steps at the side of the yard. “She uses it to help older men get their leg over.”

  “Helen, stop it” laughed Claudilia. …she makes it sound like some sort of geriatric sex aid. “I’ll walk Rosie next to the block and you can step on from there. Give it time and you will be able to mount from the ground, but for now we’ll use the block.”

  Angus realised there was nothing he could do. They had it all planned and he would have to trust the girls, trust the girls and hold on tight he decided.

  Helen got a saddle and bridle for Rosie. Claudilia led her from the stable and tied her to the fence. Angus remembered the apple in his pocket, using a penknife he cut it into pieces and fed them one at a time to the horse.

  “If you’re trying to bribe her into being nice don’t bother. I told you, she is a gentle old lady and as comfortable as your favourite chair,” chided Claudilia.

  “I once broke my arm falling off an chair,” said Angus.

  “Really, how old were you?”

  “About eighteen months my mother says. I would climb onto anything, getting up wasn’t a problem, but I fell off with spectacular regularity.”

  “Well you won’t fall off today. We’re going for a nice gentle ride, no gallops, no jumps and definitely no falling off.”

  “You’re no fun Aunt,” said Helen from the other side of the yard. “I thought we could take him over the hill and into the woods where those trees are down, there’s plenty of room for jumping and the access for an ambulance is easy.”

  “Don’t listen to her,” said Claudilia, tightening Rosie’s girth …that’s the strap under the horse’s belly which holds the saddle in place. Goodness, don’t you people know anything.

  In a few minutes Rosie was ready to go, and Claudilia left her tied to the fence. She collected Pumpkin from the stable and let the big chestnut mare stand untethered in the middle of the yard. Pumpkin stood as stationary as a statue while she was fitted with her saddle and bridle. Angus watched, Claudilia seemed to just dump them on and tighten them up. If he’d been doing it there would have been a full risk assessment, a coned off area and paramedics on standby. Next, the girls asked Angus to stand on the mounting block and they walked Rosie across to him. Angus climbed aboard. It wasn't pretty but he got into the saddle and was sitting the right way round. The two girls fussed around beside him. They put his feet into the stirrups and asked him to stand up. Angus balanced for a moment, then very nearly made a jump for freedom when he caught sight of the distance, the alarmingly small distance, between his testicles and the hard lumpy bit at the front of the saddle.

  Claudilia and Helen stood back and looked at him, then walked around Rosie, they studied him from all angles.

  “Angus you need to sit up,” said Claudilia. “And relax, for goodness sake relax. No not that much, you look like a sack of shit tied in the middle with old string. Sit up again, that’s better.”

  Angus sat meekly atop Rosie. He was trying to remember everything he’d learned about horses, but right then his mind had gone completely blank. “Just try to stay on, balance and don’t make a fool of yourself,” he said under his breath. He watched Claudilia and Helen as they climbed onto their own horses, they did it with a grace he knew he’d never achieve. With an older Belcher in front and a younger one behind Angus rode out of the yard. He hoped that he didn’t look as scared as he felt. They were soon on the path along the bank of the river Wimple. Claudilia had decided that for Angus’s first excursion it would be best if they had a gentle ride. They would go along the side of the river for a short way, they’d not turn onto the path through Abbey Farm where Rosie had come from, a precaution in case it upset her and she made a dash for home. Instead they’d continue for a while, until they reached the next bridleway, that would take them through Hazel copse and past a large pig farm. From there they’d pick up the path which encircled Monk Hill and follow it back to Wimplebridge.

  A short way past the boathouse Claudilia announced they would have “a little trot”. Angus did his best but he was nervous and out of practice. He got a shooting pain from his groin area every time he bounced down and met Rosie coming up. Eventually he got the hang of it and began to move in time with the horse.

  From behind Helen was telling Angus that they had reached the stretch of the river where her aunt liked to swim. “I wonder if this is where that fisherman went in?” Helen called out, “Maybe he caught sight of you Aunt, he could have mistaken you for a whale. Did you put up a fight like Moby Dick, then pull him down to Davie Jones’s locker?” Claudilia’s blood ran cold. Did her niece know something and was playing with her, or was this just a chance remark?

  “I’m not Moby Dick” called back Claudilia, trying desperately not to sound concerned.

  “Okay how about the Kraken from Pirates of the Caribbean, is that more suitable?

  “I’d prefer Dory, the odd one in Finding Nemo. And if you carry on like this I’ll be forced to throw you and your little mermaid friend Emma, into the river at the very next opportunity.

  “Yes, but we’re mermaids, we can swim.”

  “But will you be able to get out of the sack first?” laughed Claudilia. “I’ll tie you both up, pop you in with some rocks from my wall and drop you off the bridge.”

  At this point Angus butted in. “Hang on a moment, I’ve just had that wall fixed. You can’t go pulling it down just so you can drown members of your family and friends. You’ll have to find something else to weigh them down. Haven’t you got some old chains lying around at the yard? That would do just as well” …Bugger, I’d forgotten he’d had my wall fixed.

  The conversation went back and forth between the three of them as they walked their horses along the river bank. Helen wanted to know how Claudilia would go about drowning a mermaid. She did know they could breathe underwater didn’t she? What sort of sack would her aunt use, plastic would be strongest but hessian or jute is more environmentally friendly.

  Is this a normal conversation Angus wondered? He tried to remember what he’d last talked about with Maggie. His wife was only ever interested in calories, as well as exercise and food fashions. Last week she’d been banging on about grains and pulses, She’d said something about the risk of bloat and trapped wind. Angus had not really been listening. Did Claudilia worry about such things? Unlikely, she probably just farted like her horse, then gave herself a mark out of ten! The thought made him chuckle out loud.

  “What are you laughing at?” asked Claudilia.

  “I was just wondering how I came to be sitting on a horse, walking along the bank of a river and thinking about gastric explosions.”

  “Whose gastric explosions are you thinking about?
And how the hell did you get to there from drowning a mermaid.” …Christ on a bike, this man’s demented.

  “It’s far too complicated to explain, but how did you decide to kill of Arial?”

  “Who the bloody hell’s Arial?” asked Claudilia, wondering if the real nutjob at Macintosh Manor was Angus, and not his dearly departed wife.

  “Aunt, Arial’s a Disney mermaid, don’t you know anything?”

  “This my dears is why I prefer dogs and horses. You know where you are with dogs and horses. Let’s have another little trot shall we.”

  Angus groaned at the thought, it was just loud enough for the girls to hear and they laughed as they dug their heels in.

  After a while, and only a couple of eye watering collisions between bollocks and saddle, Claudilia called back that they should slow to a walk and then stop. They’d reached an old wooden gate, it let them join a path on their left. She slipped off Pumpkin, opened the gate wide and led her horse through. Rosie and Merry walked past Claudilia who fastened the gate behind them and remounted. Helen was in front and Claudilia trotted Pumpkin until she was alongside Angus.

  Side by side they walked their horses across the field. Claudilia said that although it was one of their fields they had a tenant, a third-generation farmer, for this piece of land. “Sometimes I forget it’s ours,” she said. The field ended but the path carried on between two high hedges. It was narrow and they had to walk in a single file. Angus enjoyed the extra height afforded by the horse and he scanned the thicket for bird’s nests. An angry bullfinch tweeted at them from deep inside the hawthorn, Angus could just make the bird out and wondered what possessed it to nest in such an inaccessible place. Satisfied that he …or she, had chased off the intruders, the bird went silent again and was immediately lost amongst the branches and leaves.

  It was Helen’s turn to slip off her horse and open the next gate. She was very pretty thought Angus, and dear God there’s something about a girl in jodhpurs, it makes you glad to be alive. Perhaps he was unconsciously smiling, or perhaps she could read minds, either way Angus felt a sharp sting on his thigh, Claudilia had given him a smack with her riding crop.

  “Ouch. What was that for?”

  “I was reading your mind and I didn’t like what you were thinking,” said Claudilia. “She’s still at school, and anyway, you remember the girl Emma, the other one we were going to drown? Well that’s her girlfriend, and we’re talking twenty first century girlfriend if you get my drift.”

  “Oh. But I really wasn’t thinking anything like that,” he lied. “But she is very pretty though, takes after her mum I suppose,” and then he added quickly, “in looks I mean. I wasn’t suggesting that Marie was one of them, not that there’d be anything wrong with it if she were,” he blurted out. “Just a bit odd for Hubert that’s all. Everyone to their own though, live and let live, that’s my motto.”

  Claudilia enjoyed seeing him flustered. It was funny to see someone who’s normally so self-assured and in control tripping over his own tongue. She began to laugh, she got louder and louder, tears were running down her cheeks. “Stop it, stop it, you’ll make me fall off. Just let your brain catch up with your mouth.”

  Helen was back on Merry and trotted up to her aunt. “What’s the matter with you? You look like you’re having a fit.”

  Please God, open the ground and let it swallow me up thought Angus. It looked as if Claudilia was going to replay the last few moments for her niece.

  “Nothing, nothing at all.” Claudilia said, in a rare demonstration of tactfulness. “It’s just Angus describing what the saddle’s doing to him down below. He was asking if we could head for home, there’s still some chance he might walk again one day.”

  Okay, that’s better than it could have been, thought Angus. He tried desperately not to look at Helen. He thought she’d be imagining his mashed tackle with a mixture of humour and revulsion. “Thanks, I think,” he whispered to Claudilia.

  They walked on and soon they were passing a field with triangular huts dotted around. There appeared to be dozens of pigs of various ages in the field. The older ones were lying in the shade while their piglets ran around in the sunshine. As they passed small groups looked up from where they were busy at troughs or rooting around in heaps of straw. The horses didn’t alarm the little pink porkers, they soon returned to their food or to chasing their siblings.

  “What do they eat,” asked angus.

  “Those tall metal cylinders are full of pig nuts” replied Claudilia. She pointed at some bulk storage silos, “the troughs are refilled two or three times a day but they also root around in the soil for worms, roots and grass. Pigs will eat just about anything if they’re hungry.”

  “Don’t they get slops anymore, I heard that farmers used to collect the waste from schools and hotel kitchens.”

  “Years ago they did, but today pig farming is much more scientific. Margins are tighter and consumers want lean meat with not much fat. They need to be grown to the right weight and condition in a few months. They use concentrates for their main food source today.”

  In the field a woman and a teenage boy were sitting astride a quad bike looking at their animals.

  “You can feed almost anything to a pig,” said Helen. “That’s Sally Ann and Jacob over there, they should know,” she added.

  “Why?” asked Angus

  “Well” said Helen. “Sally Ann is the only daughter of Isaac. He’s the farmer here and a strict God botherer, a member of some weird church group who think that even breathing on the Sabbath is a sin. Anyway she was a bit wild when she was younger and she got pregnant with Jacob. She wouldn’t tell her dad who the baby’s father was. Isaac decided he knew anyway. He reckoned it was one of the travellers who’d been around to help with the harvest and then moved on.”

  Claudilia butted in. “Helen, don’t go spreading rumours, we don’t know what happened to Jacob’s dad. If he was one of the travellers, then he probably moved on when the work was finished. I don’t suppose he even knew Sally Ann was pregnant, he simply never came back this way, that’s all.”

  “That’s possible” agreed Helen “but mine is a better story.” She laughed. “They say Isaac tracked down the boy and killed him, beat him to death with his bare hands, then cut him into bite size bits and fed him to the pigs.

  “Would pigs really eat a person” asked Angus

  “Oh yes,” said Claudilia. “I don’t know if that particular story is true, but there was a Mafia boss a few years ago in Italy, He was convicted of feeding a rival to his pigs. The poor chap was still alive when the porkers started on him.”

  “If I wanted someone to disappear permanently, I’d definitely feed them to the pigs,” said Helen.

  “Helen, have some tact for God’s sake,” Snapped Claudilia. “Must I remind you that Angus’s wife is still missing.”

  “That’s all right” replied Angus. “I don’t think anybody’s fed her to the pigs. They wouldn’t get much of a meal off Maggie anyway,” he said with a little laugh. “But it looks like she has left me. She’s been planning it for a while. She’s taken the money she got from her mother’s house and gone to her brother in New York. I’d like to know where she is, but after the last few days I’m not sure I want her to come back.”

  They rode on without talking, Helen embarrassed that she’d been so tactless, Angus wondering where Maggie was and Claudilia thinking she may have done him a favour after all.

  Chapter Fifty

  “What does she want now?” sighed Claudilia. The three riders had just turned into the lane approaching the stable and they could clearly see the detective sergeant. Josie Robinson was enjoying the sunshine as she sat on the mounting block.

  “Maybe they have found your wife Angus” said Helen.

  “I don’t suppose so,” said Angus … and I bloody hope not.

  “Good Lord, it looks like the cavalry’s arrived” said Josie, as the three horses came to a stop in the yard and everyone dismoun
ted. Helen and Claudilia slid gracefully off Pumpkin and Merry, like the accomplished riders they were. Angus on the other hand, swung his leg over Rosie’s back, leaned forward across the saddle and slid gingerly to the ground where he stood for a long while getting used to something solid beneath his feet. Satisfied that he wasn’t about to collapse, Angus took Rosie by the reigns and walked in a bow legged fashion, across to the paddock fence.

  “Can I have a word please sir.” Josie had followed him across the yard. He looked like he’d come second in a ball kicking competition thought Josie.

  “Just loop her reigns over that post Angus, we’ll take care of Rosie,” called Claudilia. “And if you can walk that far, go down to the cottage. The back door’s not locked, stick the kettle on and make yourselves at home.

  They walked down the lane, at a pace set by Angus. The police officer wondered if it was usual for a man whose wife had so recently gone missing to take up horse riding. She’d been to the manor and not found him there. She went to the office of Macintosh Energy where Cindy said he’d gone to the pub for lunch. He’d not called and wasn’t answering his phone.

  “Is that out of character for Angus,” she’d asked.

  “I can always get hold of him, he never ignores his phone.” Replied Cindy.

  Josie had wanted a word with Claudilia too. She tried the cottage and then the yard. Pumpkin was out so Josie deduced that Claudilia had probably gone riding, …with observation skills like that no wonder she’s a detective. Josie sat on the mounting block, pulled out her phone and began playing tetras. She was comfortable, the sun was warm and there was no hurry to get back to the station. With luck horse and rider would be back soon, and anyway it was almost the end of her shift.