The Country Set

by Fiona Walker

  He pushed the gate closed, looking up just in time to see a blonde figure walk behind the yew trees in the distance. For a moment he felt as though a ghost had taken hold of his hand. Hermia had moved like that once, light and slight, a will-o’-the-wisp beacon far ahead.

  Making his way around the back of the Austen family mausoleum – cause of the great upset when they had wanted to put Hermia into it – he drew close enough to catch sight of her again. She was standing in front of his wife’s grave, square-shouldered and slim-waisted in tailored black linen. He couldn’t see her face, but he could already guess her identity. She was reading the inscription, ten of Shakespeare’s sweetest lines, her stage-namesake’s first speech in A Midsummer Night’s Dream, swearing every lovers’ emblem she can conjure that tomorrow truly I will meet with thee. Kit had been inconsolable with the need for that promise at the time, demanding the entire speech be engraved, not just its final couplet.

  Everyone got so fraught around death and its remembrance, he reflected bitterly, much as they did with movie credits. His experience of directing films had left him shocked at the self-indulgent narcissism of the industry; his experience of organised remembrance had left him eager to die before anyone else he loved did so, and before he was pressurised into making any more films. He’d not let them carve a generic job description and cast list on Hermia’s gravestone: beloved wife of, mother of, daughter to, sister to. She was his to love and cherish in death as in life, and he’d refused to surrender that love to convention. It was a small rebellion, given the Austen family had buried her among their own, marked with the Christian name that had never been his for her. Kit hadn’t known Hermione, just his own sweet Hermia.

  The woman standing at that gravestone was hugging herself tightly, still staring fixedly at the inscription. His sinews hardened. He could hardly march up to his wife’s childhood friend on the day she’d buried her own father and accuse her of letting Hermia down but, right now, it was the thing he wanted to do more than anything. He’d never quite shaken off the rage of his Donne forefathers, notoriously loud-mouthed, brawling farmhands, known for picking fights all over Cumbria.

  As he moved forward to speak to her, divine intervention came in the form of the vicar, emerging from the church porch, all hand-wringing sympathy and moist-browed androgyny in voluminous black robes, beckoning the woman inside.

  Seeing her in profile before she disappeared into the church, Kit let out a hollow laugh of recognition. She was the horsebox blonde. His nemesis twice over.

  *

  Far from being unaware of Lester’s sentry duty as he imagined, Pip was extremely irritated that he hadn’t yet approached her for sustenance or company. Nor had he noticed that she had been missing for over half an hour. She might have been suicidal, under attack, at the bottom of the cellar steps and he wouldn’t even have known. She’d thought they were friends as well as colleagues, looking out for each other today of all days.

  The mourners showed no signs of leaving. Lester remained skulking in his corner while everyone still milled about talking horse and country; the hunt lot were getting drunk, the Austens taking over as loudest voices and social networkers while the Percy grandchildren stood together, pale-faced and deep in conversation.

  There was nothing left but crumbs on Pip’s plates and stands, she noticed with satisfaction. Her cakes had proven a lot more popular than the caterers’ frothy little meringues, Florentines and macaroons, which were still on show.

  ‘I’m afraid we had to throw your home-baked bits and bobs out.’ Waspish Leonie appeared beside her. ‘It seems somebody did deliberately sabotage the buffet with lead shot, can you imagine? Yours were riddled.’

  ‘Goodness, how terrible.’ Pip’s competitive spirit flared, an experienced online game-player unfazed by dirty moves like this. ‘What a good job I baked plenty.’ She dived beneath the trestle, relieved to find her extra supplies untouched. ‘I’ll check these over personally.’

  ‘I can’t allow you to put more out, I’m afraid. Health and Safety.’

  ‘The Captain loved my baking,’ she flared. ‘I was closest of anybody to him in his final years, and this would have been his dying wish.’

  ‘My dying wish would be to live a bit longer,’ said a friendly voice and a glass of sherry was offered to Pip. ‘You look as though you could do with this. Goodness, you’ve worked hard. I love the coffin-shape theme going on. I’ll have one of everything made by you, Pipsqueak. How are you bearing up?’ The greeting was as full of warmth as a hot-air balloon, soft Yorkshire accent hinting at cosy comedy and cuddles.

  Pip felt a flush of delight to have Petra Gunn beside her. Although they’d not spoken much lately – all year, if she thought about it – Pip still counted Petra as a friendly face in the village. They’d been quite chummy once, but Petra had been so madly busy writing books and Pip was needed so much here at the stud and by her oldies that they’d hardly seen anything of each other recently.

  If Petra weren’t always so approachable and kind-hearted – and Last of the Summer Wine northern – Pip might have resented her beautiful house and family, her handsome husband, hourglass figure and oh-so-perfect life. Today she was swathed in glamorous Kate Bush retro and moreish scent, the kind brown eyes set in a filigree of mascara-perfect lashes, dark hair swept up in a chignon. The flip-flops were super-cool. Standing with her, Pip instantly felt like an insider again.

  ‘It’s certainly been busy!’ She beamed, raising her sherry glass. She never normally drank, the taste making her think of Christmas with her parents, each bottle of Harvey’s Bristol Cream taking three years in the drinks cabinet to finish.

  ‘How completely Flambards is this?’ Petra whispered. ‘Have you spotted royalty yet?’

  About to admit the only royals here were the Worcester serving plates, Pip stopped herself and adopted a not-at-liberty-to-say face. Then Petra’s delicious scent filled her nostrils as she leaned into Pip’s ear, the voice an intimate undertone: ‘I’ve just been round the yard with Gill and I was convinced I saw Charles and Camilla, but it was just the Protheroes from the Gables admiring an antique trough. Very similar bottoms. Excuse me.’ She turned as a couple interrupted her to take their leave with a kiss and wishes of bon voyage. ‘Sorry about that.’ She returned her rich treacle gaze to Pip. ‘We’re going on holiday tomorrow and you’d think we were emigrating.’

  ‘No worries.’ Pip glowed in reflected glory. ‘You must know everyone here.’

  ‘Not quite.’ She leaned back and clinked sherry-glass rims with a generous smile. ‘I don’t know you nearly well enough.’

  Pip felt as though she’d grown a foot in height. ‘Ask anything about me you like,’ she offered eagerly, highlighted life story at the ready. ‘You write books and I’m an open one!’

  Despite her assertions, Petra already knew quite a lot of biographical detail about Pip, who talked non-stop, so even their few short encounters had been a confessional tour de force, the subtext easier to follow than a picture book. Bake Off addict, serial lonely-heart, blog-lover, animal adopter and befriender of village pensioners, Pip was generous to a fault, but her loneliness and neediness often made her relationships short-lived despite her devotion. She lived alone in what had been her parents’ bungalow on the outskirts of Bagot, binge-watching box sets and devouring library thrillers faster than most women read their horoscopes (Petra had tried not to be offended by Pip’s excited announcement that some of her own books were ‘my absolute favourite sort of trash’). She had five cats named after Boyzone, three surviving Take That chinchillas and a goldfish called Johnny Depp.

  Petra didn’t feel there was a lot more about Pip that she needed to have on record, but meeting the legendary Bardswolds Bolter had inflamed her researcher’s curiosity, and Gill would never let it rest if she didn’t at least dig a little. Pip clearly thrived on attention. Oloroso fuelling a furnace of good will and honour, trying not to dwell on her hypocrisy, Petra grasped the opportunity to quiz f
urther. ‘What do you make of Ronnie?’

  The eyes bulged enthusiastically. ‘As soon as we met, I knew we’d be super-close. She’s an expert in her field, of course, and very classy. I was practically her dad’s PA as well as running this house, and I’m sure Ronnie will expect the same service, although I’m already getting job offers every day.’

  ‘I’ll bet you are. You must be sorry she’s not here.’

  ‘It’s a very emotional day for her,’ Pip said, in a reverent undertone. ‘She knows everything is being taken care of.’

  Remembering Ronnie’s joke about a very poor reception, Petra glanced across at the three grandchildren whose huddled conversation seemed to be hotting up. ‘I heard she and Alice don’t see eye to eye?’ She looked back at Pip.

  ‘Ssh!’ A glint of wickedness crossed the pug-like face. ‘Alice is very sensitive about her height.’

  Gill’s right, Petra realised. She’s sharper and sassier than she makes out. ‘C’mon, Pip, spill the beans. What do you think is going happen with this place?’

  From Pip’s wide-eyed silence, she worried she’d pitched it far too intimately. But she realised that the other woman was looking in wonder at something behind her, just as her own eyes were covered with hands smelling of Imperial Leather and chocolate brownie.

  ‘Exactly the same question that’s on my lips,’ said a smooth voice. ‘You must have left it there when we kissed in my dreams last night, Mrs Gunn.’

  Only one man could pull the old eye-covering, cheesy one-liner trick with such dry, sweet charm.

  ‘Trust me, I’m a rubbish kisser and have a cold-sore.’ Petra laughed as she swung round to face Bay, six feet two of beefy charm, from polished brogues to swept-back forelock to signet ring. His navy-blue eyes, which always reminded her of a St Bernard puppy with their folded-down edges, sparkled with delight, inviting all who crossed them to get utterly lost there.

  ‘Leave my dreams alone,’ he grumbled. ‘I can kiss who I like in them. Besides, I’ve been secretly following you round all week.’ His voice was as low as a lover’s tyres rolling quietly up to the back door.

  Petra thought about the drone and felt a frisson of shared secrecy, all a bit terrifying and too much, but she didn’t want it to stop. ‘Amazed you found a place in Waitrose car park.’

  ‘I revved my engine in the click-and-collect zone.’

  ‘I’m not that easily bought. I only popped in for Marmite to pack on holiday.’

  ‘Lucky Marmite, going on holiday with you.’

  ‘Charlie and Prudie can’t live without it.’ Petra’s eyes seemed to be having an entirely different conversation with Bay’s than the prosaic nonsense her mouth was spouting. ‘I’m more of a marmalade fan.’

  ‘Voulez vous coucher avec moi ce soir? Coarse cut?’

  ‘Seville, shredded. And non, parce que je vais coucher avec mon mari.’

  ‘Votre mari a toute la chance, bonne Madame. But I’m the lucky one talking to you right now.’

  Watching them, Pip felt as though her nose was once again pressed to the screen, watching old movies and mini-series melodramas. They were Dex and Alexis, Rhett and Scarlett, Leia and Han Solo. She could hear Lady Marmalade soul-sistering in her head now, saw Nicole Kidman and Ewan McGregor cast in jewel-bright colours in Moulin Rouge, Tom Cruise and Kelly McGillis with blue sky and cumulus reflecting off their sunglasses in Top Gun.

  *

  Marching back along the Plum Run from Compton Magna’s graveyard to Bagot’s pub to collect the Saab, Kit still had enough residual Islay fire and Colombian caffeine left in his belly to turn and face his old home. Upper Bagot Farmhouse, despite the developer’s face-lift and division, wasn’t a whole lot different, still a busty Georgian front with a saggy Tudor bottom. A pretty young blonde was wiping the windowsill of what had once been their dining room. Spotting him staring across the lane, she lifted her cleaning cloth to wave. Student, au pair, trophy wife? The latter were a dying breed, but the Cotswolds remained full of anachronisms, such as clever women on ‘baby breaks’ that lasted a decade or more.

  Pitching back into his car, checking a message from Orla – a glorious pop-art tourist-spot selfie, complete with emoticon and exclamation marks – he was grateful that she kicked ass in urban confinement.

  And yet, as he looked out across the orchards once more, he felt a curious sense of not wanting to leave. It was impossible to deny the beauty of the place, the comfort of the familiar. It had been the backdrop for the happiest years of his life as well as its tragedy. He knew this panorama so well. It felt wrong to be a stranger to it.

  His phone rang: Ferdie complaining that he was already late. ‘We said one o’clock. Donald wants to talk to you about Lear before the others get here.’

  ‘The tempest in my mind doth from my senses take all feeling else. Sorry. Still in the Comptons. Leaving now.’

  ‘Of course, you’ve been to the grave.’ Ferdie’s voice softened. ‘My turn to apologise, dear boy. I know how uncomfortable you find it there.’

  ‘Actually, I’m toying with the idea of coming here to finish the Sassoon.’

  ‘Have you been drinking?’

  Having rung off, sitting in front of the best view in the Cotswolds, Kit closed one eye and tried to remember the way to Stratford.

  He called up Google Maps on his smartphone for directions, but it insisted that he was looking for the Stratford East theatre in London. ‘No, no, no!’ he yelled at it furiously, after several attempts to correct it failed. He now tried Google Microphone, enunciating, ‘The RSC, Stratford-upon-Avon.’

  ‘Finding NCP car park near Stratford East Theatre, E15,’ the app promised.

  ‘YOU BASTARD THING!’

  Somebody wrenched open the back door, breathing hard with a hoarse crack of a laugh beneath it. ‘Thanks for waiting.’

  Kit looked into the rear-view mirror in alarm. The ghost was sitting right behind him now, buckling up a seatbelt.

  ‘I’ve only got twenty in cash.’ She was digging around in the neat little pockets of her black jacket. ‘Will it be enough?’

  He turned to look disbelievingly at her over his shoulder. ‘For what?’

  ‘Broadbourne station.’

  ‘You think I’m for hire?’

  ‘Didn’t I book you?’ She looked at him impatiently, then bit her lip in surprised recognition. ‘Oh, goodness, it’s you.’

  As Kit opened his mouth to reply, his phone demanded that he turn left out of the car park, still hell bent on navigating him to Stratford East theatre.

  *

  ‘Oh, God, I’m so sorry!’ In the back of the car, Ronnie suppressed involuntary laughter, the inconvenient absurdity of graveside humour striking her afresh. His face was so perfectly, furiously indignant. ‘I was expecting a taxi to be waiting and I thought you were it – forgive me.’

  ‘Turn left,’ intoned a recorded voice.

  ‘Oh, shut up!’ Kit threw the phone onto the seat beside him, checking the car clock with horror. ‘I’ll forgive anything if you can tell me the best way to Stratford.’

  Ronnie’s amusement vanished as abruptly as it had surfaced. Kit Donne, the man who was afraid of storms, smelt of whisky. ‘So, you’ve been to the pub?’ Good manners skewered her usual directness, her eye on the keys in the ignition now reacquainted with their comedy-and-tragedy mask pendant.

  ‘Just a coffee and a quick drink.’ He turned back to the wheel, checking the car clock again. ‘Let me give you a lift. I have a feeling the station’s en route. We can introduce ourselves on the way. I’m running stupidly late.’

  Ronnie very rarely experienced a deep pinch of fear, but its fingers were beneath her ribs already. Her father and Johnny had both driven drunk – one into almost every ditch in the vicinity in an era when it was acceptable behaviour, the other to his death when it was not. While still the secret vice of many a countryman, it was anathema to her. ‘Are you sure you should be behind a wheel?’

  ‘I’ve been doing it
a while now, although I appreciate you haven’t seen my greatest manoeuvres. Handbrake turns, reverse parking and all that.’ The accent was so familiar. Her years in Cumbria had made it a comforting lull, despite its current pique. There was an affable, diffident charm about him, a man accustomed to soothing big egos, playing his own self-effacingly down. Yet beneath it all was a clever malcontent: the eyes behind the genial smile were flint-like.

  ‘There’s a whiff of the distillery in here.’

  ‘Is there really? It was only a couple. Maybe three.’

  ‘You could still lose your licence.’

  ‘I have lost it, all bar the rubber stamp.’ He stabbed the key into the ignition slot on the second attempt, then started grappling with his seatbelt. ‘Overtaking horseboxes too fast.’ The eyes caught hers in the mirror. ‘They can’t ban me twice.’

  ‘They can do worse than that if you cause an accident.’ She didn’t know if he was over the limit or not, but she didn’t want him driving anywhere to test it. Hermia had once described her husband in a letter as ‘a man whose thoughts are his own, his conscience universal’. But the universal conscience was late for lunch. The engine started. Looking over his shoulder, his foot stamped on the accelerator. Instead of reversing, they shot forwards, only just stopping short of making a leap into the orchards. ‘Shit!’

  Ronnie didn’t pause to think. Looming between the two front seats and reaching for the ignition key, she was practically in his lap.

  ‘What are you doing?’

  ‘I should ask you the same question.’ She tugged the plastic fob deftly from its slot. ‘Stop and think, for goodness’ sake.’

  ‘I’m meeting friends for lunch.’ His hand flailed for his keys.

  ‘You’ll meet your maker first.’ She tried to retreat to the safety of the back seat, but her dress belt was caught round the handbrake, making it impossible.

  *

  Pip was no great moraliser, despite her parents’ long and extremely faithful marriage. Her early Dynasty imprinting – along with a teenage addiction to Jackie Collins and Danielle Steele and most recently box-set binges of Mistresses and The Good Wife – had lent her faith in the glamour of infidelity; her own very brief marriage had by contrast given her a decidedly low opinion of the institution.