Country Lovers

by Fiona Walker

  They watched in fascination as, on the other side of the paddock, Carly introduced Luca to the hard-muscled, silver-eyed mob headed up by her sister-in-law Janine at the handlebars of the wheelchair, a bulldog in long black hair extensions, nail art glittering. She was giving Luca a thorough cross-examination by the look of it. His eyes flitted back across the field to where Pax and Bridge were standing.

  ‘What’s the story between you two?’ Bridge persisted.

  ‘There’s no story.’

  ‘Like feck there’s not. I have a nose for desire. Grab him while you can. There’s others will if you don’t.’

  ‘I only walked out of my marriage a fortnight ago,’ Pax whispered, shocked by Bridge’s directness.

  ‘Which means you’ve been looking around for ages.’ Bridge was unapologetic. ‘C’mon, I’d barely unpacked my honeymoon bikini. We all do it; I’ve friends who make a hobby of it. They’re all knocking on, mind you.’

  Pax shook her head. Whilst it was true that she’d desired men other than Mack for a very long time, they were all abstract facsimiles, her natural default forged a long time ago, her type hardwired. And it wasn’t Luca’s blond-lashed, smiling kindness, surely? ‘Kes is my priority.’

  Bridge watched the boys playing. ‘He’s lovely manners, your wee man; Auriol will lap him up.’

  ‘I hope he likes it.’

  ‘They all like it there.’

  ‘How’s the job going?’

  ‘Orgasmic,’ Bridge thrilled. ‘It’s better than sex, and I’ve not even officially start—’

  ‘There you are!’ A sharp Scottish descant rang out behind them, making Pax’s blood fast-flow dizzily. ‘Where’s my wee soldier? Kes!’

  The Elnessed white helmet of her mother-in-law emerged through the darkness, stooping to greet Kes as he hurtled in from the left and slammed himself into his grandmother’s arms.

  ‘Nanaforce! Have you come to watch the weaselling?’

  ‘No, wee man. Go play a minute while I talk to your mammy.’ Mairi straightened up, propelling Kes away before turning to address Pax in a hushed hiss, ‘Is it wise to bring the child to see blood sports? I thought they were all illegal these days. Are there dogs?’ She looked nervous.

  ‘Weasel hounds!’ Bridge laughed, then saw Pax’s face and coughed, stepping away.

  ‘What an unexpected surprise, Mairi.’ Pax forced herself to stay calm.

  ‘Indeed.’ Mairi waved her arm and a tall shadow materialised, Muir Forsyth joining his wife, stone sentries in padded gaberdine.

  ‘Tishy…’ He nodded politely.

  ‘Call me Pax.’

  They looked at her blankly. Pax had been repeatedly saying it for the past fortnight, but she might as well have asked them to call her Derek.

  ‘You know why we’re here.’

  ‘Er, no.’

  Bridge was still hovering nearby, tactfully pretending to admire some of the tattered bunting.

  ‘We went up to the house but there was nobody there.’ Mairi’s hiss grew more accusatory.

  ‘You should have called. Is everything okay?’

  ‘We’re here to pick Kes up, my dear.’ Muir was playing good cop, all condescending smiles and rigid manners.

  ‘Don’t want to go!’ Kes wriggled away from Mairi and velcroed himself to Pax whose arms flew around him.

  ‘There must be some mistake.’

  ‘It’s Mack’s midweek access night if you’ve forgotten.’ Muir tilted his head, scrutinising his daughter-in-law’s face like a kindly psychiatrist with a sectioned patient.

  ‘You’ve got the wrong week, I’m afraid.’ Pax clenched her jaw so hard it almost cracked her teeth, aware of Kes shrinking tighter against her legs. ‘Alternate Wednesdays. It was agreed last Friday.’

  ‘Indeed so, Tish dear. Starting this week.’

  ‘Next week,’ Pax corrected, longing to see them wither away like garlic-pelted vampires.

  ‘Don’t want to go!’ Kes bleated again, gripping onto his mother’s legs.

  Pax hugged him closer. ‘You don’t have to, Kes. Next week you’re spending your fun Wednesday night with Daddy, Nanaforce and Grandforce as well as having a lovely weekend with them to look forward to before that.’ Damn her throat tightening, that giveaway wobble. ‘I’m sorry you’ve had a wasted journey. We’re all so muddled at the changes, it’s an easy mistake, but of course Kes is with me tonight; he’s spending the day at the village school tomorrow. With his new friend Ellis.’ She played it as lightly as she could manage, aware that Ellis and his feather duster were standing nearby, waiting and watching with extraordinary silver eyes.

  But Grandforce and Nanaforce wouldn’t be defeated.

  ‘Mack will bring him into school and collect him tomorrow,’ Muir said firmly, kindliness under threat from murderous eyes. ‘You can come and pick him up afterwards, Tishy. Handover is at 4.30 p.m. as stipulated. It’s a legal matter, so we suggest you honour it.’

  ‘We’ve got you scampi and chips for tea tonight,’ Mairi told Kes brightly; his favourite. ‘With Smarties ice cream to follow.’ Also a firm winner. ‘And when Daddy comes home from work he’s bringing that electric doggy you wanted, from Paw Police.’ Hat-trick.

  ‘Paw Patrol!’ Kes shrieked rapturously, letting go of his mother and crossing back over the divide to those open arms.

  Fearing her child had been won with two courses of processed food and a toy so expensive that Mack had squarely rejected it as a Christmas one, Pax started to splinter. Wrong-footed, furious at the low blow – they’d be offering Irn Bru and a guinea pig next – she demanded to know where Mack was. ‘He and I need to talk about this.’

  ‘He’s still in the office, poor man.’ Mairi sighed sadly. ‘He’s been putting in such long hours. Twice as much work to do since you walked out, of course.’

  Pax had her teeth gritted so tight her jaw started cramping. She knew Mack well enough to guess he was only there to avoid his parents and flit between active windows on his five daisy-chained monitors, indulging in the belief that surfing live news streams and sports footage counted as work.

  She called his numbers. He didn’t pick up. Still she kept her voice low and calm. ‘Mairi, Muir, let’s go back to the house. We can sort this out there.’

  ‘No need, dear,’ Mairi countered, artificially bright for Kes’s benefit. ‘Best we head off before you get yourself upset. We’ve the car in the gateway over there, and we don’t need to fetch anything for Kes seeing as he’s got Rab C. We’ve all that he needs at home, haven’t we, Kes?’

  ‘Paw Patrol!’ Kes roared excitedly.

  ‘I have the email on my phone, I can double check the dates.’ Pax scrolled the messages furiously, but was unable to find it. ‘Hang on, I’ll call my solicitor.’

  ‘Dinnae fuss, lass.’ Muir was a standing stone of granite stubbornness beside her. ‘The bairn wants to come home with us.’ His voice, tinged with aggression was just like Mack’s. ‘It’s time you faced the facts.’

  ‘Face this fact: it’s the wrong day.’ She pressed the phone to her ear, dismayed that Kes had a tight hold of Nanaforce’s hand, eager to be off to meet his Paw Patrol icon. A few paces away, standing on one leg and holding his duster like a Maasai warrior, Ellis watched them, his silver-eyed face impassive.

  Poke them in the eye with it! Pax wanted to beg as a recorded voice greeted her and she hurried to find a better signal to leave a message and ring round the other numbers she had for solicitor Helen Beadle. When they all went to voicemail, she started tapping out a frantic text instead. From the corner of her eye, she was eternally grateful to see Bridge launch herself into the fray, keeping the Ms talking. Neither Forsyth being by nature chatty, and both increasingly cold and fractious, it was a doomed mission. Their expressions darkened when Carly and Luca reappeared through the darkness, carrying a brace of brimming polystyrene beakers each.

  ‘It’s made from Turner cider, so it’s bloody lethal!’ Carly warned loudly. ‘Luca just made eve
ryone laugh their heads off pretending he and Pax don’t – oh, hi.’ She spotted the elderly gatecrashers.

  ‘These are Kes’s grandparents!’ Pax’s predictive text was going rogue, her fingers shaking too much to hit the right letters, her son rechristened ‘Ken’ in her haste.

  She could hear Bridge introducing her in-laws in her Belfast brogue. ‘Murr and Merry, this is Luca and Carly.’

  Mairi’s reply was drowned out by the hurdy-gurdy hotting up. Still typing, Pax edged closer and walked straight into a tree’s cage of branches, poking herself in the eye, phone flying from her hands.

  ‘We’re all Pax’s bezzies,’ Bridge was exaggerating on the other side of the tree before stage-whispering to the others. ‘There’s been a bit of a mix-up over dates!’

  Pax dropped to her knees and searched around in the dark grass, grateful to find her text still beaming from her phone screen in badly typed readiness.

  ‘What are you doing down there, Tishy?’ Muir demanded from beyond the canopy of branches.

  ‘With you in a tick!’ She waved at them, closing one streaming eye anxiously to see Luca offering up his beakers to the Forsyths, violin case under one arm like a mafioso.

  ‘Can I tempt you to a mulled cider?’

  They both stepped back as one and Muir held up a Puritanical hand. ‘Certainly not.’

  Backing up to get one signal bar, Pax could see she had mistyped so many words, the message looked Dutch. Through the tree branches, somebody said ‘Sláinte! She heard Carly’s creamy voice ask, ‘Have you ever been to a wassail, Murray?’

  ‘Feck, but I need this.’ Bridge was soon making slurping noises as she knocked back her steaming cider cup.

  Through her one good eye Pax could see her in-laws now backed up against a stone wall, looking mutinous. As she pressed ‘send’, she felt a little gloved hand slip into hers. Kes’s eyes brimmed up at her.

  ‘I want to go, Mummy.’

  ‘It’s not the right night, darling.’

  ‘Oliver wants to go too.’ He tugged at her hand.

  ‘Oliver’s not here, Kes.’

  ‘He is!’ Wrenching away, he ran back to his Grandforces.

  Pax followed, covering her streaming eye with her hand, tripping again.

  Muir muttered something at his wife, questioning her sobriety.

  ‘You heard the boy, Tishy.’ Mairi was impatient. ‘He wants to go with us.’ She gripped Kes tightly to her. ‘He needs his father.’

  Muir’s amen was worthy of a pulpit. ‘A drunken night out’s no place for a bairn his age.’

  ‘It’s not even five o’clock.’

  ‘And the alcohol flowing!’ Mairi shuddered.

  No matter how many episodes you cry side by side through Call the Midwife, to have married a mother’s son was to make a secret enemy of her, Pax realised forlornly. Especially if you are the second person to do it.

  ‘We’ll bring him back here tomorrow to try the wee village school as agreed,’ Muir reassured her unenthusiastically.

  ‘And Daddy has other schools lined up to try next week!’ Mairi told Kes. ‘Much better schools, with special things like swimming pools and pets!’

  His wet eyes glimmered.

  In the shadows, Ellis scuffed away, trailing his ’Splorer Stick.

  Pax could hear the Wassailing procession making its way along the lane beside the Green at last, braziers crackling.

  She crouched in front of Kes, heart thumping, voice at its most reassuring, ‘What do you want to do, Kes?’

  ‘I want to go, Mummy!’ His voice caught with sobs, tears starting to stream, overwhelmed by it all.

  She hugged him tightly.

  ‘Enough,’ she sighed hoarsely, kissing his woolly-hatted head and wet cheeks. ‘Of course you can go back with the Grandforces, Kes. Good plan! Mummy will see you tomorrow after school and can’t wait to hear all about it.’ Releasing him, she ignored teeth-sucking intakes of breath beside her from Bridge and Carly and cupped his face. ‘I will miss you more than the sun.’

  ‘I will miss you more than the galaxy.’

  ‘More than infinity.’

  ‘More than infinity and – beyond!’

  They hugged again, squeezing hard. They were safe with routines, already growing accustomed to painful goodbyes. Pax’s heart thumped against his through the winter layers, her painful eye streaming while the other held determinedly on to its tears.

  ‘Come along, Kes,’ Mairi said briskly. ‘Let’s leave Mummy with her… friends.’

  Still Kes clung to Pax. ‘Come home, Mummy,’ he said in a small voice. ‘Please let’s go home.’

  Throat tightening so much she could hardly speak, heart ablaze, Pax had never felt so torn and alone. This is home now. ‘I can’t, my darling.’

  ‘Because you don’t love Daddy any more?’

  ‘We both love you so, so much. Now you enjoy that new toy, wake up with a smile, look out for Ellis at school tomorrow, and remember I’m with you every step of the way.’ Her voice was catching, razor blades flailing in her throat. ‘Every step.’

  ‘Okay. See you tomorrow, Mummy!’ He turned to gambol away, quicker to recover, a happy survivalist. His normal; her living hell.

  ‘Don’t wave him off, Tishy.’ Muir stepped in front of her. ‘It’ll only upset the poor bairn. You enjoy your wee celebration.’ He turned and set off, raising his arm in farewell.

  ‘And you can go to hell,’ she breathed to herself.

  ‘I heard that!’

  It would be logged in the Big Book of Bad Mummy.

  Pax pressed a heel of her hand to her sore eye again, glancing at the others with her good one, unable to speak, the blood roaring through her head so loudly she thought it might burst from her ears. She wanted to be somewhere else fast. Somewhere else, alone with a drink.

  ‘That was brutal,’ Bridge whistled.

  ‘I’m sorry you had to witness it.’ She managed to sound a lot more normal than she felt, grateful that Bridge’s brand of sympathy was Teflon-coated as she received a pat on the back guaranteed to cure hiccups or dislodge a sweet from a windpipe.

  ‘Let’s get you another drink, queen. You need your mind taking off it.’

  ‘Looks like the wassailers are almost here.’ Carly’s creamy voice was distracted as blazing fireballs on sticks appeared on the Bagot footpath at the far side of the orchard, Morris bells ringing. ‘You still okay to play, Luca?’

  ‘Sure, we’ll catch you both up.’ Luca’s face was in darkness, his phone ringing again. He still had a cup in each hand, Pax realised.

  She turned at the sound of car doors slamming beyond the orchard wall as Mack’s parents prepared to set off, and she fought an almost overwhelming urge to run after them. Watching the headlights of the Forsyths’ car blazing away, her wave was lost to the dark along with her stricken face. Thank you, darkness. She tipped up her chin, just one thought thundering in her head like hooves: Do not cry; you must not cry; I refuse to cry. But all too soon the chasing field of bad thoughts surged past. How soon until I can get back inside Lester’s cottage for a drink? I need a drink, deserve a drink, I must have a drink now. The plum gin is still there. But so are the letters. The bloody, bloody letters. Think about something else. Kes. Oh, Kes. Do not cry. Don’t think about any of it. I need a drink. No. No. No!

  ‘Breathe, Pax.’

  Pax realised Luca was standing very close, his warmth eclipsing her personal space, his eyes on her face in the near dark. She didn’t mind for once, grateful that she had to behave around Luca.

  ‘I’m fine.’

  ‘You want this?’ He offered a cup to her, the tang of cider ramped up with a hit of apple brandy and cinnamon.

  She stared back at him through the gloom, open-mouthed. ‘Is this a test? Because your timing is pretty harsh.’

  ‘You’d fail.’

  ‘I will not fail!’ Do not have that drink, she instructed herself. Another drink, maybe, definitely. Later. In private. And a cry. And a t
ext rant at Mack.

  ‘Pax, we both know you’re going to get banjaxed tonight.’ Luca withdrew the cup, voice a kind earworm of Irish brogue. ‘Better I keep you company than you do it alone.’ He still had the violin case under one arm, she noticed, like a novelty clutch bag.

  ‘I’m fine.’ She closed her watering, tree-poked eye again, not prepared to acknowledge the truth out loud. I’ll get home soon. Get plum gin. ‘Arguing would have made it worse. Kes wanted to go with them.’

  He said nothing.

  She could see the glow of the procession drawing closer along the footpath, the flaming torches ritualistic and pagan. ‘You heard him say it.’

  ‘Sure I heard him.’ He stepped back, looking up at the sky, a scattering of stars out on show now the clouds had chugged off. ‘I want to go, Pax.’

  ‘Be my guest.’

  ‘I. Want. To. Go,’ he repeated carefully.

  ‘Be. My. Guest!’ she snapped back.

  ‘Don’t you see?’ His voice had a break of empathy in it. ‘I don’t want to leave you here, just leave this place. With you. I want to go.’

  ‘What you want to do is frankly your—’ She stopped, a knife between every rib. I want to go, Mummy. Kes hadn’t said that he wanted to go with his grandparents at all. She’d been the one to jump to that conclusion, flustered by their certainty, by imaginary Oliver.

  She covered her face, reliving his tears and confusion. He had even begged her to come too. Overwhelmed, overtired, overstimulated Kes. It was past his teatime. It was cold. There were lots of strangers here. Her humiliation folded in and in, a paper spill ready to burn. ‘I’m the worst mother.’

  She felt dizzy and sick, ready to run, yet grateful that Luca was a wall in front of her.

  ‘You’re a bloody good mother,’ he insisted. ‘You love your son more than the world. Now toughen up and love yourself.’ For a moment his forehead was almost resting against hers as he tipped his head to be heard over the approaching crowd, a waterfall of curls ticking her brow. ‘Right this minute, you want to run home and drink until you’re numb.’

  ‘You’re wrong,’ she lied. I’ll be home soon. There’s plum gin.

  ‘I have a drink right here.’ He stepped back.