Country Lovers

by Fiona Walker

  Luca felt too tired for sympathy. But she was Ronnie’s daughter and she was in distress, and he could no more leave her suffering than he could any animal.

  ‘I’ll finish this off.’ He put his hand on her shoulder, its bones hard as pebbles in his palm. ‘You look done in.’

  A memory flashed, her soaked through in the hotel bathroom, body thin as a greyhound’s.

  ‘Everything’s mixed up…’ Her deep voice trembled.

  ‘We all lose our way sometimes, life gets mixed up,’ he reassured her gently. ‘Go and lie down. Let me take over here.’

  ‘I said the feeds are all mixed up,’ she explained, teeth gritted, turning back to the buckets and picking up the stirring spatula. ‘Why don’t you go and lie down?’

  ‘I don’t want to lie down.’

  ‘Neither do I.’

  The stallions bellowed.

  ‘I’d rather carry on with this alone, if that’s all right.’ The polite brittleness was cracking.

  ‘Ronnie left me in charge.’

  ‘I didn’t hear her say that.’

  ‘I’m the manager now.’

  ‘That’s a matter of opinion.’

  ‘D’you have a problem with it?’

  ‘This place will never make money again.’

  ‘I don’t agree.’

  ‘That’s because my mother is paying you to agree with her.’

  Luca’s irritation needed little needling. The long journey, missing the chance to see his family, the heartache he’d left behind in Canada, the shitty welcome, the call he always dreaded, all crowned by finding Beck here was all under his skin like splinters. ‘Ah, get over yourself.’

  Very tired people should never argue in Luca’s experience, but as Pax turned to face him he felt an unassailable urge to shake her out of her rigid, neurotic politeness and point out that there were more important things at stake here than her self-obsessed marriage misery. He’d just landed Compton Magna with a whole heap of problems. She didn’t even know the start of it.

  ‘You’re not my boss,’ Pax fumed, ‘so bog off while I trot on.’

  ‘Fuck off yourself, calling me a bogtrotter!’

  ‘I didn’t call you a bloody bogtrotter, I said BOG OFF, Mack!’

  ‘Now it’s Mick, is it? What sort of Irish-hating racist are you?’

  ‘I said Mack. It’s my husband’s name. Shit! I’m going mad – sorry.’ She held up an open palm, politely compelled to take the sting out of the exchange, although the murderous base note still gave her hostility away. ‘Be grateful I didn’t call you Mummy.’

  ‘Heaven forbid,’ he muttered. ‘No girl over the age of ten should call her mother that.’

  ‘Why not?’ Pax glared at him. ‘Does it remind you that Ronnie’s old enough to be yours?’

  ‘Hardly.’

  ‘She’s grandmother to six.’

  ‘I’m sure she loves them all.’ He stared her out, unblinking, but the thought wasn’t one he wanted to dwell on.

  ‘You have no idea at all about our family, do you?’ Her voice was climbing again.

  ‘It’s not my business to know. It’s dysfunctional horses I sort out, not marriages.’

  ‘What are you insinuating?’ Higher still.

  He sighed, softening his approach. ‘Crying into the feeds just makes their oats salty.’ He held out his hand for the food scoop she was still brandishing. ‘Let me take over here.’

  She crossed it tightly in her arms, the words fired out staccato. ‘I know it might not look like it to you, but I’m trying very hard to keep what’s going on in my personal life separate from Mummy and this stud; I suggest you do the same and we’ll be just fine.’

  ‘My personal life has nothing to do with anyone here.’

  ‘C’mon, Luca, you took this job for Mummy. That’s personal.’

  ‘I’ve not landed five minutes!’ She had some serious trust issues with Ronnie, he’d started to realise. No matter that she was right. He’d never been able to resist her mother’s charm. ‘How come you’re so jealous of her?’

  She tutted the question away. ‘And what about all the calls? The woman I answered today, who refused to give her name? Don’t tell me she’s another grandmother you’re keen on? Poor Lester’s had to field messages for days. He even took a death threat this morning.’

  ‘What death threat?’ Ice shot through his blood.

  ‘I don’t know. Do you get many?’

  ‘Of course not.’ He pictured Mishaal, his twisted scarred face, then forced the image away.

  ‘You really shouldn’t have come here, Luca. Everyone says we should sell this bloody place,’ Pax raged on, eyes wild, the façade truly cracking now. ‘I thought Mummy should be given the chance at turning it round because it’s what Grumps wanted, but she’s blowing the budget on you. This is our family’s future and you’re just breezing in like some fucking gigolo.’

  ‘You don’t know me.’

  ‘I don’t like you or trust you, either.’

  ‘Me and your husband both. Or is it all men you hate?’

  ‘You bastard!’ She hurled the feed scoop at him. Her aim was surprisingly good and it whacked him over the eye.

  ‘You bitch!’

  ‘Bastard!’

  Luca’s jazz hands went up, accompanied by a piano-key smile. ‘Hey, you need to calm down.’

  ‘And you need to leave my marriage out of this! This is not about that! This is about hundreds of years of family history, Percy history, which I can’t stand back and let my mother screw up on some nostalgic shag-fest. All your pompous, moralising shit is so fucking phoney! You just saw pound signs and cheap thrills. Even Mummy called you “louche”. I can’t believe you had the nerve to question me about my lifestyle choices!’

  Then she started shouting, real proper hysterical shouting, glass-shattering and vicious. Luca had no idea somebody so classy and British was capable of such foul language, such total fury. It would be impressive if it weren’t so relentless – and violent.

  She called him Mack twice, Scottish once – and a bastard so many times he lost count. He stopped trying to shout back after a while, but he was stripped of sympathy, watching her in horror. He’d never seen emotion this raw.

  And then it struck him far harder than any of her words. I’m the husband substitute, he realised in shock. She’s fighting her battle with Mack through me because he won’t talk to her. No wonder he’s lying low, poor bastard. She’d annihilate him.

  The next moment a mixing spatula glanced off his ear. It hurt. Really hurt.

  ‘Stop that, you mad fucking cow!’

  ‘Don’t you dare speak to my sister like that!’ roared a regal voice from the door.

  Small, fierce and unafraid of violence, Pax’s saviour stormed inside and almost upended Luca with a sharp elbow as she marched past.

  Sobbing, the redhead rushed into her arms. ‘Make him go away, Lisp!’

  ‘Gladly.’ Luca held up his arms and backed out of the feed room.

  All in all, it wasn’t his greatest first day in a job.

  On the yard, the stallions were screaming at each other again.

  Blood beating through his arteries like club music, he went to check on them, but the nervous energy coursing off him made Beck fly to the back of his stable to stare fearfully at him, huge black eyes awaiting punishment. Luca stepped away, finding it impossible to calm down. He knew he should go back and apologise – the woman was obviously in bits. He could hear the little deerhound puppy howling in the stables cottage.

  She also had a young dog she was lousy at looking after.

  As Luca went to let Knott out, the stud’s phone started ringing again, that plaintive shrill bell that he was already learning to hate. He expected Pax to sprint past him to answer it, but it rang on and on as he opened the door and the puppy burst out to cavort around him. Through the gloom he could see the hall was full of chewed paper, several puddles and a small poo neatly deposited on a shoebox lid. The p
hone was still ringing and the paper trail led on into the small kitchen. Luca plucked up the phone receiver, longing to drop it straight back down again, but aware that it appeared to be the only line of communication and it could be an emergency – Ronnie in crisis, or Pax’s son taken ill… He held it to his mouth.

  ‘Yes?’

  ‘Is Pax there?’ Deep, dull Scottish voice.

  ‘I can go and see.’ He didn’t relish the prospect.

  ‘Wait! Who are you?’

  ‘Luca. Is this Mack?’

  There was a long silence.

  ‘I’ll go and see if I can find her, shall I?’ he asked, starting to wonder if the man at the other end had hung up, watching Pax’s puppy trotting towards him, crumpled paper in mouth.

  ‘No,’ Mack said tightly. ‘Just give me a moment.’

  Luca unravelled some of the tightly curled phone cord, an elaborate dance that led him back almost to the hallway again. He could see the puppy’s path of destruction, which had started with a low dresser shelf of several shoeboxes, some still neatly stacked, two upended, neat A5 sheets fanned around the largest one.

  He could hear Mack breathing heavily at the other end of the line. What was he doing? It sounded like a dirty phone call.

  Knott had followed him to the hall, shredding his piece of paper as he went.

  Luca took what was left of it from his mouth and turned back to smooth it on the small, much-oiled expanse of wooden countertop between sink and hob. It was a letter in faded blue fountain pen on old-fashioned watermarked paper, the handwriting distinctively round. Dear Piggy, he read. Please destroy this the moment you have read it like all the others. I know you will. And thank goodness for you.

  It was a love letter, he realised.

  We are so alike, you and I, so wretched in our wretched honour. I was supposed to be coppicing this morning but I sat up on the old wall by the fattest elm and watched you ride for a whole hour, unable to tear my eyes away. It was the most beautiful sight, outshining every grace of nature, the copper beeches bowing as you passed, the grass beneath you sighing. I imagined you saw me. Did you? It was as though you were riding for me.

  ‘Would you mind giving her a message, Luke?’

  He jumped guiltily, pushing the letter away. ‘Sure.’

  More heavy breathing.

  ‘Will you tell her that I know you two have been fucking for months, and that I will fucking come over there and kill you if you lay one fucking finger on her again. Got that?’ The call ended.

  Luca’s palm splayed on the tattered paper. Today just got better and better.

  He carefully refolded the chewed letter and went to pick up the rest, tidying them into the shoeboxes as best he could – he had to throw out the soiled lid – and cramming them into the dresser. He then tracked down a pile old Daily Express newspapers, neatly stacked by the fireplace, which he used to cover the wet patches on the quarry tiles, all the time girding himself to return to the feed room. Straightening up, the yawn that racked through him almost split his jaw.

  Fuck it. Let them sort it out between them. He was going to bed. Wherever that was. From now on, he would be utterly professional. He would not flirt with the boss or fight with her children. He would stay in Compton Magna long enough to help Beck, and for Ronnie. He would have absolutely nothing more to do with Pax Forsyth beyond rigid professional politeness.

  ‘What are you doing in here?’ She burst in, all red hair and bobble hat, like Where’s Wally.

  ‘Yes, what are you doing in here?’ The small, fierce sister was behind her, fists tight at her sides.

  Great.

  ‘I answered the phone.’

  ‘There’s one in the house you can use,’ snapped the sister. Then, remembering her manners, she thrust out a hand. ‘Alice Petty.’

  ‘Luca O’Brien,’ he said, shaking it and finding his fingers gripped and released as though shut in a car door. ‘And I’ve not actually been in the house yet.’

  ‘Was it Mack?’ Pax was demanding. She couldn’t look him in the eye, he noticed.

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘Why on earth didn’t you come and get me? Is he still there?’ Pulling her hat off, she hurried towards the wall phone.

  ‘He told me not to get you. He asked me to give you a message.’

  She spun around, looking intently at his left shoulder.

  ‘It’s a bit personal…’ He glanced at the other sister, uncertain whether Pax would want her to hear it, however ludicrous. It might be a truth once removed, another man, an illicit love affair. She was a beautiful woman. There was all too often someone else involved; he should know.

  ‘Alice, why not go over to the house and put the kettle on?’ Pax suggested.

  ‘Are you sure?’ Alice eyed Luca fiercely.

  ‘Absolutely.’ Pax’s eyes flickered guiltily towards Luca, and he realised that he might have known her less than twenty-four hours, but he almost certainly knew more of her inner life than her sister, from her decimated marriage to her drink problem.

  She waited for Alice to go, staring at his ear now. Her voice shook. ‘So what did he say?’

  He repeated it word for word, including all three fuckings.

  ‘Can you say that again?’

  He did so, without the fuckings this time.

  When she started to snort, he thought she was crying, and wearily went in search of some kitchen roll. She let out a weird half-wail, leaning against the countertop, which she slammed with her palm.

  Luca hoped she wasn’t about to get violent again. He’d just about had enough.

  Cautiously, he edged beside her and offered the hunks of tissue across. She howled, banging the surface again.

  He put a reassuring hand on her back. It shook beneath the thick coat fabric.

  And he realised she was laughing. Was totally overcome with laughter. Breathless, she turned to face him, pressing her hands to her cheeks and slapping them to pull herself together. Her eyes gleamed. ‘Oh God, this is so cruel, and I can’t bear it that I’m laughing at him, I really can’t, except…’

  She was off again, her head bashing against her arm as she doubled over, dislodged hairclip releasing a sea of red curls. And there was something so infectiously liberated about her sheer joy, so unselfconscious, that Luca couldn’t help smiling. It was like watching Beck earlier, the first few moments the stallion had been let loose in the round pen, when he’d turned himself inside out kicking up his heels and rolling before he’d frightened himself again.

  ‘I’m sorry.’ She struggled to regain her breath, wiping her eyes with the kitchen roll as the laugher finally abated enough to talk. ‘And I’m so, so sorry that I shouted at you, and I know you won’t forgive me, particularly as we really don’t like each other very much and you almost certainly want to go to bed with my mother, which means I’m probably never going to like you, so you’re quite the wrong person to share this with, but we have been through a lot today, you and me, so I might as well to tell you.’ She took more deep gulps of breath, like a marathon runner who’d just burst through the tapes. ‘I’ve just realised something.’ The smile widened, golden gaze bright as harvest moons. ‘I’ve just realised I’m free. I’m actually free. Thank you! I could kiss you.’

  Her eyes gleamed, looking straight into his now, effervescent with happiness.

  Luca swallowed, recognition dawning. He’d seen just that look on another face, on another continent. A face of someone he’d loved very much. He hoped Pax could hold on to her freedom. ‘It must feel amazing.’

  ‘It’s like coming up to the surface after nearly drowning at the bottom of the ocean.’ Her deep voice was still breathless. ‘And I know my head will go back under the water many times, and that I have to swim against the current, really swim hard, and that I might drown again if I’m not careful, especially if I open a vodka bottle,’ she gave him an apologetic look, ‘but I’ve taken my first big gulp of air. Beautiful, sweet, fresh air. That’s what it feels like.’ She smi
led, and it wasn’t a teeth-bearing grimace. It lit up her face like a full moon, pale and pearl bright.

  He nodded and smiled back. ‘That good?’

  Their faces were too close. Their hands were almost touching. The smiles dropped away and he realised, too late, that he could picture himself as the stranger she’d kissed in the bar, the cheap quick thrill of it burning blood to his groin.

  ‘I promise, Mack’s totally incapable of killing anybody.’ She looked down at their fingers, nail tips dark with molasses. ‘Unless you count boring them to death about golf. If he caught us soixante-neuf on that sofa right now, he’d probably just tell you about the sixty-nine he once scored round Royal Dornoch.’

  Luca laughed, but wished she hadn’t planted the image. ‘I’ll watch my back.’

  ‘Two death threats in one day, Luca.’ She looked up brightly. ‘That’s just selfish.’

  ‘Comes with being louche.’

  He wondered for a moment if she was about to add a third. Fuck this job up and I’ll kill you. She was so hard to read, the black humour counterpoint to the childlike realisation that she was free. Again, he was aware that, by circumstance, he’d witnessed something nobody else in her life would.

  ‘I’d better introduce you to Alice,’ she said, not moving.

  ‘That would be grand.’ He didn’t move either.

  She looked down at their hands again, head tilting, studying his rings: scuffed Claddagh, signet, eternity. ‘We can show you where the flat is.’

  He could feel the soft weight of her extraordinary hair brush against his cheek. It still smelled of last night’s hotel shampoo. ‘Thanks.’

  ‘I still don’t like you very much if it helps,’ she said, turning briskly away, snatching up the crumpled kitchen roll to put in the bin.

  It did.

  PART THREE

  10

  The Bags were trotting at speed in their ongoing quest to burn off post-Christmas bulges, swerving around a clutch of oncoming runners with heads down and earphones in.