Country Lovers

by Fiona Walker

  ‘Why’s that happening, then?’ she asked, removing them.

  ‘They’ll tell you when they’re ready.’ He turned away, fires sparking in his own palms, incubated in work gloves. He glanced across the yard to the white head of Beck watching him through the stallion grilles. How do you heal a rift like that between a horse and the abuse he’d suffered at the hands of a man?

  ‘Come this way and I’ll show you the observation tower.’ Pax’s husky voice sounded like a harbour bell, closer now, that deep vibrato she only used when she was sitting on a suitcase of unhappiness. How did you heal hers?

  When she and Bridge finally trundled buggies noisily across the cobbles, he knew straight away something was wrong. She knew he saw it, determinedly avoiding his gaze.

  Bridge hailed them noisily, gratefully handing the yawning toddler on her hip across to Carly and chuckling. ‘You two ready to wassail close to the wind? It’s started already. The parish committee are very hot on hurdy-gurdies. Listen.’

  They could all hear the wheezing of a medieval instrument in the distance.

  ‘We thought we’d go and stake a good spot by the bonfire,’ she said, elbowing Luca. ‘You’re coming too. No arguments. Carly has helped you finish the yard specially. Just so we’re clear, it’s all old baldy men dancing with handkerchiefs and weird Wicca Man rituals but we need a bacon butty and cider right now more that we need fecking oxygen, do we not?’

  He watched Pax’s face, freckles crowding as she frowned, not wanting a chaperone. He could guess why. They both knew that rolling down to a cider-fest wasn’t a wise idea, even surrounded by a small army of children. He wasn’t feeling too safe himself.

  ‘Sure.’

  *

  From the top of the stud’s drive, it was possible to see down into the little walled orchard opposite the Green, one of the few remnants of the Comptons’ cider-producing heritage. As a small child, Pax had imagined its trees to be courtly dancers, skirts trimmed with blossom lace in spring, embroidered green tassels in summer and red fruit in autumn, then in winter as twisted and gnarled black skeletons. Today those skeletons had been joined by a few hunched figures in woolly hats. A thin plume of smoke rose up from one corner, cast sulphur yellow by a horizon-low winter sun that was striping everything gold as it sank amid fast-dispersing clouds.

  Ahead of Pax, Luca’s black Puffa jacket was like a tiger’s back as they set off for the wassail, Bridge hurrying to keep up alongside him.

  ‘I warn you, compared to back home the music’s always totally fecking shite, even if the grog’s sensational,’ she said.

  Instinctively, Pax glanced at Kes, imagining him parroting ‘fecking shite’ back at his father, and then she decided it served Mack right if he did. She liked the way Bridge spoke exactly as she found. Carly’s barbed tongue was more circumspect, letting off her own buggy brake with a huff, eyes sliding past Pax without looking at her. ‘We could always go to yours if it’s crap, Bridge,’ she called. ‘I’m dying for a cup of tea and a biscuit.’

  Walking alongside, Pax let the sarcasm wash over her. Her mind was far too busy, thoughts churning like a curdling sauce. Keep thinking about something else.

  ‘Looks like we’re in for a starry night,’ she predicted brightly.

  ‘I’m sorry about them letters,’ Carly muttered, not sounding it.

  ‘Forget about it.’

  ‘It wasn’t Jackson’s fault.’

  ‘I said forget it. Honestly.’

  ‘Were they important?’

  Unable to answer, Pax knew Carly’s chippiness was because she couldn’t possibly understand how devastating the discovery of Lester’s box of letters was. It rewrote her childhood. Keep thinking about something else.

  ‘Don’t our boys get on well?’

  ‘Ellis gets on with everyone.’

  Pax doubted that. ‘I’m so grateful you brought him.’

  Watching Kes charging about with Ellis, happier than she’d seen him in weeks, Pax could forgive Carly her sullenness. The two boys were lost to a five-year-old world that lifted them above the rest of the party, an instant, loyal bond where worlds, real and imaginary, coincided joyfully, far from the paranoia of adulthood with its hormones, heartbreak and hubris. And its hooch.

  God, but she longed for a drink.

  Her father was the first one who had taken her wassailing, she remembered. He’d probably only done because he wanted to get pissed too. Had Lester been there?

  Keep thinking about something else.

  She focussed on Carly, forcing a smile. She was a beautiful woman, her high cheeks and grey-denim eyes like her son’s, both with angular, boyish bodies, fierce walk once again marching forwards, broody looks cast sideway at Pax who admired her uncompromising indifference, a marked contrast to her loud-mouthed friend. Bridge was adorably entertaining, but Carly had steel spun through her.

  Ahead of them, the phone in Luca’s pocket started ringing. He silenced it and it started again.

  ‘Demanding girlfriend?’ laughed Bridge.

  ‘Something like that.’

  He glanced back over his shoulder, brows low as he studied Pax’s face, then the neon smile switching on for Carly. He seemed very taken with Carly, she’d noticed with a heat-rash feeling in her skin that annoyed her, a misplaced possessiveness.

  Confusingly, when she’d looked through the letters and realised the truth, cold with shock, the person Pax had instinctively wanted to tell was Luca. But talking wouldn’t help keep the family secret.

  Keep thinking about something else.

  She needed a drink. She was boring herself with this need, this weakness, this thinking. She must stop thinking.

  In her pocket, her own phone had started buzzing furiously, a full signal flooding her inboxes. She ignored it, not wanting Mack’s vitriol to touch her.

  ‘Mummy – look!’ Kes was balancing along the low stretch of drystone wall by the gate entrance, Ellis behind him. She hadn’t seen him so happy in months.

  I love him. I can’t bear how much I love him. She clapped overhead, grateful for laughter bursting through before tears dared, feeling her rings slip off as she did so, the ‘ice and a slice’ as Bay had called them, too loose on bone-thin fingers to hold on.

  They landed silently amid the leafy mulch alongside the tarmac, and she had an overwhelming urge to let them lie there. Her mother had left her rings in the bathroom the day she ran – one Pax’s flame-haired grandmother’s emerald engagement ring, the other a gold band battered from hard riding – equally untreasured. An abandoned marriage, like hers. Her father and Lester. The shock.

  Keep thinking about something else.

  ‘You dropped something.’ Carly had turned back again and was watching her.

  ‘It’s nothing,’ she dismissed.

  Carly put on the buggy brake and hurried to look, pulling off her mittens and dropping to her haunches to feel through the wet leaves. ‘Here!’ She unearthed the wedding band. A moment later she was holding up the engagement ring.

  Pax felt ridiculous for wanting to leave them there, her cheeks flaming, quickly checking the other two hadn’t noticed. ‘Thanks.’

  ‘You should be wearing gloves in this cold.’ Carly straightened up, reaching out for her hand to put them in it.

  They both gasped. The rings were almost too hot to touch.

  ‘It’s you!’ Carly sounded incredulous, glancing up at her in shock, still holding on.

  ‘What’s me?’ Pax was baffled.

  Carly was looking down at their hands again, muttering, ‘They would tell me, he said. I might have bloody guessed. Of all people.’ She let out an irritated little sigh.

  ‘What?’ Pax persisted. Luca was looking back.

  ‘What we do in life echoes in eternity.’

  ‘Is that Shakespeare?’ Pax humoured her, wondering if she was entirely sane.

  ‘Maximus Decimus Meridius. Listen, Pax,’ Carly rubbed Pax’s hands as she would one of the children, ‘I’m sorry
about the letters, really I am.’

  ‘It’s fine, really. Not your fault. They were just there.’

  Keep thinking about something else.

  Trying to take her hands back, she found she couldn’t. It felt discourteous, like breaking a spell. Warmth was steeling up her arms.

  ‘I know I’m just staff and all that,’ Carly was talking again, her voice hushed and fast, ‘but I hope we can get on. Bridge reckons you’re not as stuck-up as all that and you’re going through a tough time, and I want you to know,’ she grimaced, plucked brows furled as she looked up into Pax’s eyes, ‘that I’ve got your back.’

  ‘My back?’

  ‘Yeah. In your corner, watching out for you. Strength and honour. You understand what I’m saying?’

  Pax looked at her pretty, earnest face, not really understanding at all. Warmth was flooding through her now. It was oddly comforting, like drinking brandy. Having always sensed hostility fizzling off Carly, it was also a revelation.

  ‘I hope we can be friends too,’ she said with feeling.

  ‘Really?’ Carly looked surprised.

  ‘Yes. I admire you. You’re kind and fierce.’ As she said it, repeating the words her father had used to describe her as a child, she realised they weren’t so very different at all. ‘And you love horses. Dream combination.’

  Carly seemed to grow taller, shaking her hair back. ‘Yeah, and our boys get on.’

  ‘There’s that too.’

  ‘Strength and honour.’ One warm little hand fist-bumped against hers.

  ‘Strength and honour.’

  ‘Now don’t lose these again, you hear? Flog them instead.’ With a knowing grin, Carly took the rings from Pax’s hand and put them back on her finger, the strangest of driveway weddings to seal an unexpected friendship.

  ‘Thank you. I will.’ She reached in her pockets and pulled out her gloves with an apologetic shrug. She hardly needed them any more. She was glowing.

  They hurried to catch up the other two who had stopped to wait near the bottom of the drive, deep in conversation.

  Luca gave Pax a curious look, but she looked away, uncomfortable under scrutiny. He probably thought they’d been swigging WKD Blue stashed in the nappy changing bag.

  ‘Don’t let me drink more than a couple,’ Bridge was saying as they set off again, closing in on the antiquated racket coming from the orchard. ‘The first year we moved here, after they’d sung the wassailing bit, Aleš thought it was folk free-for-all and started on a load of traditional Polish songs. Couldn’t shut him up. My man can drink, but that cider’s a killer. I was hallucinating for days.’

  Her machine-gun delivery helped Pax, covering fire for her shell shock. Round and round the carousel spun. Her father and Lester. It had to be a bad dream.

  Keep thinking about something else. Don’t think about it.

  When they arrived in the orchard, the woolly hatted half dozen gathered there grumbled that nobody knew what was happening. The bonfire was smoking like a Korean factory, the wassailers hadn’t arrived and the temperature was plummeting fast as the last strains of light faded in the sky, the few remaining clouds clearing away to herald a frost.

  ‘Where are the bacon butties?’ Bridge demanded hysterically. ‘The drink?’ She cocked her head back at the others. ‘Badly organised as usual. Thank God I have Yoyo bars.’ She delved in her handbag.

  Taking in the scene, Pax realised her distorted childhood memories had fooled her, the streaked winter sunset, ribboned apple trees and small children less rose-tinted in real life. Tattered summer fête bunting had been strung loosely between branches, fading fairy lights flickered on dwindling battery power. One of the village faithful had revved up an old kettle barbecue, on top of which rashers of bacon lay autopsy-flaccid alongside a great cauldron of tepid spiced cider. On the two memorial benches, a hotchpotch scratch band was being led by the rapturous hurdy-gurdy devotee who was turning the handle on his wheezing, twanging discord accompanied by two of the primary school’s Year Sixes on recorders, a long-haired teenager on a guitar and an over-enthusiastic Auriol Bullock on an Irish bodhran.

  ‘Jeez, it’s worse than fecking ever,’ Bridge hissed. ‘Sorry, Luca. It’s not exactly the Fleadh.’

  His phone was ringing again. He swiped left without even glancing at the screen.

  ‘Can you not turn that thing to silent if you don’t want to talk to her?’ She tilted her head to take in the medieval music. ‘On second thoughts, keep it on. It sounds better than this.’

  ‘If one of them played in tune it would be a start.’ He looked around uneasily.

  Pax wondered if the calls were from his ex in Canada, uncomfortable with how bothered the thought made her.

  ‘We can always try to borrow you a violin,’ she said without thinking.

  ‘Don’t tell me you play the fiddle?’ Bridge was impressed.

  ‘In that case I’m right on it!’ Carly’s sardonic voice was sweetened with the West Country cream of a mission. ‘Grandpa Norm’s got at least three and “Swallowtail Gig” is the only tune he knows; he plays it every Christmas and birthday. I’ll text Janine.’

  ‘You’re all right.’ Luca flashed his most defensive big smile, holding a hand up.

  ‘It’s no bother.’ Carly’s thumbs were already flying over the screen. A moment later, she was reading out a reply scattered with emojis. ‘They’ve already set out. Janine’s sending one of the kids back for it. Norm loves the wassail. He’ll be made up there’s a fiddler.’

  As they all moved across the orchard, Luca fell in step beside Pax with a quiet, ‘Thanks for that.’

  ‘I’d like to hear you play.’

  ‘Has something happened?’

  Don’t think about it. ‘It’s nothing.’

  ‘You look upset. I’m worried about you.’

  Their jaws hardly moved, aware of Bridge and Carly navigating buggies in front of them, hailing village friends.

  ‘I’m fine.’ Again she wondered if he’d come along to police her drinking.

  ‘Liar.’ His phone rang again. As before he didn’t look at it, simply cancelling the call.

  ‘Who is that?’

  ‘Don’t change the subject. Tell me what’s going on?’

  ‘It’s an old village ritual, Luca,’ she said loudly, deliberately misunderstanding. ‘It dates back to the Anglo-Saxons.’

  ‘Aleš thinks it’s devil worship,’ Bridge laughed, turning around.

  ‘It’s an English apple-growing tradition,’ Pax explained. Don’t think. Talk. ‘A procession comes to bless the orchards and ask for a good harvest next autumn by putting cider-soaked toast in the tree branches. There’s a king and queen, usually village teenagers, who lead the songs and light the big bonfire.’

  ‘Were you ever queen?’ Bridge asked.

  ‘Years ago.’ Don’t think.

  ‘Who was your king?’

  ‘I forget.’ Don’t think. Pax felt the memory pinch painfully, looking across the apple treetops to the dark silhouettes of the horse chestnuts on the green, the same arboreal audience that had witnessed her night as consort to a long-gone doctor’s son who she’d kicked when he’d tried to French kiss her behind the cider tent, even though he’d looked like Billy from Neighbours and it had given her butterflies. She couldn’t have been more than eleven because her father had still been alive. Not that he’d come to watch that year. She’d relayed it all afterwards, exaggerating the beauty and high drama, missing out the tongue-kissing thing.

  She sensed Luca’s eyes on her. The sides of her mouth were palpitating with the need for alcohol now. She looked around for Kes to stabilise her, spotting him with Ellis clambering over the drystone walls. Breathe, Pax. You love him.

  ‘My hacking buddies’ son and daughter are this year’s king and queen,’ Bridge was telling them. ‘Their mums keep trying to set them up, but you can’t force your kids to love each other, can you, Luca?’

  ‘Terrible idea.’

  Pa
x realised Luca was standing too close. It made her want to reach for his hand. She crossed her arms and watched Carly rolling back as Bridge rattled on.

  ‘My mam spent years trying to force me and my sister Bernie on the Dooley brothers because she thought their dad being an accountant gave them good prospects. One’s in prison for GBH and the other’s living as a woman now. Oh, a soul could die of fecking thirst round here. You’re buying the first round, are you not, Luca?’ Her eyes batted mock-coquettishly.

  ‘Sure.’ Pax could see the easy smile lighting up in the gathering darkness.

  ‘I’ll help,’ offered Carly, abandoning her buggy to Bridge, Jackson asleep in it, Sienna toddling between the trees with Flavia in a shrieking game of peekaboo. ‘Keep an eye will you, Bridge?’

  ‘Everywhere I look, I see triangles,’ Bridge sighed, leaning into Pax for warmth. ‘Must be the fecking bunting. You okay, queen?’

  ‘I’m good.’ Pax looked at the bunting, only seeing her father’s handwriting proclaiming love. He’d been so terribly in love. More than she’d known in her own lifetime.

  Keep thinking about something else. Don’t think about it.

  ‘That Luca fancies the arse off you,’ Bridge whispered. ‘Doesn’t take his eyes off you.’

  Reluctant to explain that he was here to stop her drinking sly apple brandies while in charge of her five-year-old, Pax said nothing. Her thoughts were being ransacked, memories shredded. Was the love between Johnny and Lester the reason her mother had run away? Had she known about it before her own ill-fated love affair?

  Don’t think about it.

  ‘Here comes the Clodfather. Wassail must be about to get going,’ Bridge announced cheerfully as the Comptons’ unofficial Vito Corleone, ‘Social’ Norm Turner, was charioteered in amid a swarm of family heavyweights, his huge tombstone torso swathed in blankets, arm raised in greeting, oxygen tanks to either side of his wheelchair like jet packs.

  ‘Does he really still rule the roost round here?’ asked Pax. Even her grandfather had been wary of Norm.

  ‘Put it this way, if he doesn’t like someone in the village, they don’t stay long,’ Bridge breathed. ‘Luca had better fecking fiddle well.’