Country Lovers

by Fiona Walker

  ‘You ready?’ Luca whispered, looking more than a little tense himself.

  She nodded.

  Only a few looked round as they sidled their way into the second row of the small circle of seats. Most were focussed on a thin-haired man in a crumpled suit telling the group how he’d relapsed over New Year, staying up late to binge drink a bottle of Drambuie, the leftover amaretto from the tiramisu and several craft gin miniatures. ‘I nearly stopped at the quince, but I was at rock bottom.’

  Pax stole another look at Luca, almost unrecognisable without his beard, his anonymity guaranteed tonight at least. Several other women in the circle were sneaking peeks at him too, she noticed. He was really quite hard not to look at.

  Scrutinised by the friend’s nanny, Pax was grateful for the oversized knitted slouch hat that covered her trademark hair, scarf wound high over her coat, her glasses further cover. Now she was in the room, she also spotted one of the semi-retired teachers from Kes’s old school and the ears of the blonde woman with the tight bun sitting directly in front of her also looked suspiciously familiar, one fringed with multiple high piercings.

  Okay? Luca mouthed, reaching across to squeeze her hand.

  Pax nodded, her hand now feeling as though it had been massaged in Deep Heat. She’d picked up a leaflet from her chair which she flipped through now, half-listening as the man in the creased suit moved on through cooking sherry and Advocaat to ‘a bottle of perry cider somebody brought to a barbecue about three summers ago which reminded me that I had friends once. I’ve driven them all away through my alcohol dependence.’ Pax looked up as he caught a sob and a caring-looking man in a Fair Isle tank top – who, she realised, must be the group leader – asked him to tell everyone how he felt about that. He still had his office swipe card on a lanyard around his neck and for some reason it made her want to run away, this reminder of the lab-rat lives outside this room which drove them all to unscrew the tops of vodka bottles. That wasn’t a tribe she could sit easily amongst.

  ‘It makes me even more grateful to have God in my life,’ Perry Cider man said.

  Pax deliberately didn’t look at Luca. The leaflet in her hands reminded her why she’d always worried that this would not be for her. The recovery message was positive, supportive and self-affirming, but there was no denying the evangelical sway of it all. From ten commandments to twelve steps was just a hop.

  Flicking a page, she could almost hear ‘hallelujah!’ with descant, strings and cassocks.

  She glanced across at Luca again. He was reading his leaflet too, forehead creased just as doubtfully. Catching her looking at him, he gave her the ghost of a wink.

  Too much from the all-new, clean-shaven, drop-dead-gorgeous Luca. She looked away, pink-cheeked. He believes in God she reminded herself. This works for him. My devilish thoughts have no place here.

  She was starting to feel the familiar tight-chested panic of needing to be somewhere else. Urgently.

  Perry Cider man had fallen silent and Pax joined in the muted applause, wondering if she could stick it out, especially when Fair Isle man asked if anybody else wanted to share their stories? He seemed to be looking straight at her. ‘I think you’re ready, am I right?’

  She shrank lower.

  But it was the blonde woman sitting immediately in front of them who spoke, and as soon as she did, Pax knew why her ears had looked familiar.

  ‘My name is Monique and I am an alcoholic, okay. This is my story.’ She looked around with her bulging, ice-blue eyes.

  Pax put a hand up to shield her face, looking to Luca in a panic mouthing Bay’s wife!

  He pulled an uncomprehending face.

  Monique’s voice – Dutch accent ironic and monotone, accustomed to shouting across arenas – echoed around the room with a jeroboam more self-belief than Perry Cider man. ‘So I’m married to a man who can’t keep his dick in his pants, okay. He has many affairs. We both do. It’s nothing new. He liked it that I am bisexual when we married, now he is less happy because my lovers are both boys.’ She laughed ironically.

  There was a creaking of plastic chairs as everyone sat up to listen.

  Is she in the right group? Pax wondered.

  ‘We both drink a lot,’ Monique went on. ‘I mean a lot. Stiff gins at six, chin-chin, with supper is maybe three bottles of wine, more afterwards, then brandy. More when we eat with his parents, more still if we eat out, which we do a lot. He classifies himself as a heavy drinker, I classify myself as dependent. On alcohol. And on him.’

  Maybe she was in the right group. Pax could feel her face flaming. Luca was looking at her questioningly. She mouthed I know her. This time he understood with a quick nod. Then he studied at Monique’s profile curiously, eyebrows shooting up as he turned back to Pax and mouthed I know her too.

  Monique played to a rapt audience. ‘My husband is like a puppy, always, but he is also very much a one-person dog. Nobody matches up to the one that broke his heart. She was his first love. Ah, sooo sweet!’ The bitterness of her sarcasm sucked air from the room.

  Pax couldn’t look at Luca. Her face was blazing now, the tight chest suffocating.

  ‘Our marriage was always on an understanding: I get a nice life, good horses, I must hostess well and always look great, we have beautiful children and once or twice a year we have drunk sex, you know? Mostly it’s better with other people, like my boys. But they are threatening to leave.’

  Pax remembered Bay mentioning Monique’s groom and his boyfriend, the reason he’d bought the Compton-bred mare back from Blair. ‘Only way to stop her staff from walking out is to buy them presents every time she makes them cry.’

  ‘But now I have a problem.’ She licked her lips. ‘I need a drink before breakfast, okay, to stop my hands shaking. I have to drink maybe two, three shots before I get on a horse. My husband has been fucking our nanny, which I do not like. Our children love her, and that’s a messy thing, a painful thing. Now he no longer wants her, and he is doing everything to avoid her until I agree to fire her, but I cannot look after them alone.

  ‘I lost my driving licence last week…’ She stopped again, another sharp breath. ‘That’s so bad for me.’ Her voice was getting lower, thicker with emotion. ‘My husband was very nice about it. He’s always nice. It makes me sad sometimes because he wants to be loved very much. But he is not a caring man and I am not a good wife. I am forty, so why do I sweat and why do I shake and why do I think about drink all the time and why I am scared…’

  Pax slipped from her chair and fled for the door. Her chest was in a vice.

  *

  Ronnie and Kes had a sofa, a roaring fire, a dog on each lap, a Stetson and feathered war bonnets on their respective heads, and Toy Story on the DVD player. It was well past his bedtime, they’d eaten their body weight in popcorn and Pink Panther biscuits and it was – according to Kes – the Best Night Ever.

  Then a voice called ‘hello!’ from the kitchen.

  In a big rural house like that at the stud, the old custom of friends and neighbours walking in through the back door still held true. It rarely ever happened because the late Captain had gone off friends in his decrepitude, Ronnie hadn’t had the time or inclination to make many locally, and they had few near neighbours. To walk in after dark was a liberty preserved for only those oldest and dearest friends one knew intimately. Ronnie supposed Bay loosely fitted one of those three categories.

  ‘We’re in the snug!’

  Tucked to one side between the breakfast and sitting room, the little tapestry-lined nook was close enough to the Aga to be warmer than the cavernous reception rooms – toastier still with the fire going – and was regrettably easy for a gate crasher to navigate.

  ‘Darling Ronnie! Gorgeous feathers, Minnehaha.’ Bay shouldered the doorway. Handsomely doing as handsome does, his hair flopped over his eye and he had a shirt tail poking out from the hem of his sweater. ‘Forgive the intrusion. Lost a gundog across your fields. Bitch on heat. In the car now, thought
I’d pop in and see how you are.’

  ‘Bay. This is Kester Forsyth, my grandson and Pax’s son.’

  ‘Splendid to meet you.’ Bay shook Kester’s hand, glancing at the screen. ‘Are you a Woody or a Buzz man?’

  ‘I like the dinosaur,’ Kes said, craning to see the screen round him.

  ‘And your children, Bay?’ Ronnie asked pointedly.

  ‘At home with our nanny,’ Bay told her, watching Buzz trigger his wrist laser. ‘Monique’s at one of her charity things.’

  Ronnie wondered whether one should make a point of turning off the film and being hospitable as her mother would have been. She decided not. Times moved on. This was her night with her grandson.

  Bay was helping himself to popcorn. ‘Pax not around?’

  ‘Mummy’s gone out with Luca,’ said Kes, not taking his eyes from the screen.

  Bay gave Ronnie a shock-horror look which she ignored, riled by his hypocrisy. Rogue males always started circling when a pretty wife broke free from the pack, she’d found.

  ‘They’re at a health class.’

  ‘Good for them.’ Like a moth drawn to the light, his attention was also now rapt as Woody tried to convince Buzz he was a toy. He reached for more popcorn. Soon he was groping his way to the spare sofa. ‘Bloody good film, this.’

  ‘Not there!’ Kes looked round in alarm.

  Bay sprang back up, peering down at it. ‘What is it, guinea pig or hamster or something?’

  ‘Oliver’s sitting there. You can sit over there.’

  ‘Can I offer you a drink, Bay?’ Ronnie asked wearily.

  ‘Marvellous idea! Now this is a really good bit, Kes…’

  *

  Luca found Pax pacing tight circles outside the Friends Meeting House fire exit, anxious and nail-chewing. ‘She didn’t see me, did she? Knowing I was there would make it so much worse.’

  ‘No, of course not. Who is she?’

  ‘Bay’s wife. Monique. Christ.’

  ‘Don’t blaspheme.’ He raked back his hair. ‘Are you sure that’s his wife?’

  ‘Of course I’m sure, why?’

  ‘Only I saw him in a car earlier with…’ He grimaced, remembering the rumpled brunette with the smudged lipstick.

  ‘Let me guess, another woman?’

  ‘You’re rolling your eyes.’

  Pax started circling again, the same crazy box-walking she’d done when he’d first met her. ‘It could be me, talking back there. If I’d married him, I mean. Not that I’d have a bisexual threesome with two men, or drink vodka before breakfast – I’ve never done that, have you? – just that she’s so unhappy and we should all be happy, shouldn’t we? We’ve only got one bloody life. In another version, reader, I married him. And maybe we’d have been good together. Maybe it’s all my fault that he’s not happy and she’s not happy and I’m not happy. I loved him so much and I went completely off the rails afterwards, I mean completely!’

  ‘Pax stop. Breathe.’ He took her shoulders, square and delicate as a carved lectern.

  She leant against him, steadying herself, heartbeat fast against his chest. Then she looked up, her eyes intoxicating, that wild hare wariness. ‘Sorry.’

  ‘Don’t apologise.’ He knew the way her vulnerability darted out of sight all too quickly, that calm sea surface she pulled across it. He longed to keep it uncovered, to find out where the storm raged. ‘Let me buy you a drink. There’s a pub across the square there.’

  ‘A drink?’

  ‘Non-alcoholic. You’re a secret drinker, remember? And if we can’t help each other to stay sober in a pub, God help us.’

  ‘Is that blasphemy or a prayer?’ She half smiled, her gaze trailing round his face, still unfamiliar with its contours, lingering on his mouth then back to his eyes.

  Luca wanted to kiss her very badly indeed. But to overwhelm her with his hot-headed instinct right now would be to frighten her into silence, and she needed to learn to heal, to start to draw some of the venom of self-blame from the wound.

  So instead he took her hand, warm and slim-fingered, and turned to walk her towards the pub. Pax didn’t budge, digging her heels in. When he turned, the hare eyes had lost some of their guardedness, warmth infusing them.

  ‘Jesus, but I’m glad I met you, Luca O’Brien.’ She pulled him back towards her and kissed him before he could tell her off.

  *

  Bay was wearing the Stetson and polishing off an ancient Talisker Ronnie had unearthed from the drinks cupboard, a fresh batch of popcorn on the go. They were now watching Toy Story 2, sporadically breaking off to sing ‘You Got a Friend In Me’.

  ‘I should go in a minute,’ he told Ronnie, words he’d been repeating like a quarter chime since arriving, along with ‘bloody good film, this’.

  ‘It is very late for Kes,’ Ronnie chided, getting up to answer the phone which had started ringing in the kitchen.

  ‘I’m not tired! You promised me a cowboy sleepover, Gronny.’

  Raising her hands, she went next door to pick up the handset, grateful to hear Blair’s voice, even crackly with interference on a bad line.

  ‘How’s it going, beautiful?’

  ‘I have two to babysit,’ she sighed, hearing shrieks and hoots next door, followed by the ‘You Got a Friend In Me’ refrain. ‘Talk to me like a grown-up, Blair.’

  ‘My pleasure,’ he growled. ‘I’ve missed you.’

  ‘I’ve missed you more.’

  Which, Ronnie realised as they carried on in much the same vein, wasn’t very grown-up at all. But she wouldn’t change what they had for the world.

  *

  On a leather sofa by a pub fire, drunk on no more than mutual affection and honesty, Pax and Luca made a pact to start out on the road to recovery together with their own rules and no need to involve God, who they agreed was happy to keep a close eye on Luca and turn a blind one to Pax’s agnosticism.

  And even though she knew he’d be gone by harvest, she felt stronger than she’d thought possible, not wanting to live in anything more than the here and now. All she had to do was think back to the wind on her face as she galloped, to his lips on hers like a first kiss, to her lioness determination to stand up to the Forsyths’ bullying and give Kes her best self. Her sober self. Her shiny and new self. Anything was possible just so long as she concentrated on putting one foot in front of the other.

  ‘I’ll be here for you every step of the way,’ Luca told her, his smile so different without the beard, no longer a defensive shield, but a force field with her inside it, with the best of company.

  ‘Not Twelve Steps.’ She pulled the leaflet from her pocket and held it up.

  He took it and ripped it in two, their fingers touching, setting off a charge deep inside her. ‘We’ll make up our own twelve.’

  ‘One – admit you have a problem.’ She got lost looking into his eyes.

  ‘I am a drunk,’ he said quietly.

  ‘I am too.’

  Neither of them looked away and he leaned closer. ‘Seek help for your problem is Step Two.’

  ‘Help me.’ She broke the eye-hold first, swallowing the sting of shame on her tongue, looking at his unfamiliar chin, transfixed by the new shelf of his jawline. She wanted to run her finger along it. But it was Luca who reached up, touching her cheek and tracing a line to her own chin, gently tilting it so that she was looking at him again.

  ‘I’ll help you.’ He held her eye.

  They said nothing for a long time. Looking at each other was lovely.

  ‘Three,’ she whispered eventually, ‘we must trust each other.’

  He made a fist and she followed, knuckles dovetailing together. ‘Four, admit our weaknesses.’

  ‘I lick the butter knife and leave lights on.’

  ‘Shame on you. Five,’ his hand slipped warmly over hers, ‘don’t be ashamed to talk about what’s happened to you.’ She pulled a face and he smiled because he knew it was a hard one for her.

  ‘I was Five,’ she point
ed out mulishly, deflecting.

  ‘You have to take this seriously, Pax.’

  ‘I am taking it seriously!’

  ‘Take Six and Seven then.’ He let go of her hand and put his up in mock surrender.

  ‘Six,’ she thought about it for a long time, ‘ask each other’s advice.’

  She waited for a quickfire comeback. When he didn’t say anything, she removed her glasses, pulled her slouch hat down over her face and then put then on again, a move guaranteed to reduce Kes to prolonged giggling hysterics. ‘Tell me, Luca, does this suit me?’

  ‘You’re still not taking it seriously,’ he sighed.

  ‘I am.’ She kept the hat and glasses on, voice muffled. ‘I’m asking your advice.’

  He didn’t answer, and she suddenly started to panic that he’d walked out in a huff, leaving her at a pub table with glasses over a woolly face mask.

  She was about to reach up and snatch it off when she felt his fingers brush her neck as he removed them, her hair tumbling everywhere. ‘That suits you. You’re beautiful, you know that?’

  He studied her face, red tendrils everywhere like medusa.

  ‘So are you… Seven: point out each other’s strengths.’

  ‘Eight. Ah yes, Eight.’ He sat back, rubbing his mouth. ‘In AA that’s the one where we list all the people we’ve hurt, harmed or wronged through our drinking.’

  ‘And Nine is tracking them down to tell them we’re sorry, yes?’

  ‘Up to you. Start with someone you love and trust, maybe, and work out from there.’

  She picked up her glass, watched the bubbles rise, looked at him over it. ‘I’m sorry, Luca. I was hell when we met. I passed out on you, threw up on you and DT-ed alongside you. I hated you for seeing me like that.’

  ‘It was one of the most amazing nights of my life.’ He held her eye again. On and on. Then he smiled, the big sugar-rush smile that started in his eyes and burst out across his face. ‘Ten: forgive yourself and love yourself, because no matter how many times you hear it, you have to be able to believe it, Pax. Keeping things bottled up shatters self-esteem.’