The Country Set

by Fiona Walker

  Someone with a torch was standing on the lane by the stud entrance, waving them down. Looking craggily heroic in a stockman’s jacket and bush hat, Blair Robertson marched up to the driver’s door. Rain-lashed and wild-eyed, he was devastatingly sexy.

  ‘Have you seen a horse? A foal?’

  ‘I work at the stud. I’m Pip.’ Her voice was a Penelope Pitstop squeak of excitement.

  ‘Which one is missing?’ demanded Lester.

  ‘The buckskin colt foal. Gone a while, we reckon. Could be anywhere. Ronnie’s bringing the quad-bike down.’

  Lester was out of the car like a shot, so thin the wind bent him sideways, like a bare-branched tree. ‘You check Sixty Acres, Pip,’ he barked through the door, as he zipped up his coat. ‘I’ll go up to High Pasture. Hop to it!’

  ‘I can’t abandon the car here!’ she bleated, reluctant to get wet. ‘I have passengers!’

  ‘They can help.’

  ‘One is a Hollywood movie actress.’ She wasn’t budging.

  ‘That never fucking stopped me having an adventure.’ Orla flipped the front seat forward and jumped out too. ‘Now I’m starting to enjoy myself. I knew there was a reason to wear practical shoes.’

  ‘Those are not practical shoes.’ Lester glared at the dainty flat lace-ups.

  ‘There are wellies in the boot!’ Pip stayed glued to the steering wheel. ‘I think I’d better wait up at the yard in case he comes back there. Somebody needs to be on site.’

  ‘I agree,’ Kit muttered, from the floor in the back. ‘Ideally two people.’

  Lester didn’t stay to listen to the faint-hearted. He waved a hand dismissively over his shoulder and headed along the lane towards the bridleway.

  Orla pulled on the wellies and an old coat from the boot, then raced after him.

  As Pip turned the car into the drive, she almost crashed into a quad-bike flying in the opposite direction.

  In the back seat, Kit’s head slammed against the central console, forehead indented with vent stripes. He bobbed up in time to see his nemesis swerve to the driver’s side, a blonde Mad Max on a throbbing Honda.

  ‘Oh, Pip, I’m so glad you’re here!’ That husky voice, accustomed to hailing neighbours across country estates, could project round the NEC arena without needing a mike. ‘We need everyone we can get. Do you want a lift on the back of this?’

  ‘I’ll follow. You go.’

  ‘You’re an angel!’ She whizzed off.

  ‘Sod it.’ Pip stopped the engine. Ronnie Percy had every measure of the Captain’s charisma and a great deal more charm. Her loyal heart swelled, the family calling her to arms. If only it wasn’t quite so wet out there. ‘I’ll have to do this even in my best wool coat and pixie boots.’

  ‘You’re not going too?’ Kit demanded. ‘Can’t you at least drop me off?’

  ‘Go up to the yard. Key to the tack room’s on the top of the door sill. Put the kettle on and call for back-up.’

  ‘Call who exactly?’

  ‘There are numbers on the board,’ she said vaguely. ‘Neighbourhood Watch, maybe.’

  There was another crackle of lightning and a crescent of sparks from a nearby telegraph pole.

  Kit cowered lower.

  ‘Power’s blown. Happens all the time. Forget the kettle. If you’re staying in the car, can I borrow your coat? This is M&S Limited Edition.’

  *

  In the Jugged Hare, the log-burner roared, the rock anthems blasted, and a large Embden goose was waddling round the tables picking up dropped crisps.

  The departing publicans were in defiant mood, despite that night’s drink-the-bar-dry marathon turning out to be something of a damp squib while Hurricane Claudia gave the village a soaking. The elite gathering’s weather-beaten exclusivity made it feel surprisingly jolly, a hardy clan of regulars in high spirits. Those who were there had no intention of leaving while the storm was still hurling thunderbolts outside.

  Propping up the bar, the bedraggled Goose Walkers had bailed early, and were drowning their sorrows in free liqueurs, having been blown from door to door for little reward, that evening’s haul barely enough to fill a Bag for Life.

  ‘It’s like I remember it in the old days tonight,’ said Brian Hicks, the parish council chairman, Shakespeare beard still dripping storm water from its point, as he perched on a barstool with a large Cointreau.

  ‘Isn’t it just?’ agreed Gill Walcote, limoncello in hand, her normally wild iron-grey hair flattened from wearing a hood all night.

  Beside her, Paul had forsaken the digestifs for mineral water – paid for – so as not to break his cycling training programme. ‘You’d think they’d have laid on food other than kittle crusps.’

  ‘Nibble a carrot.’ Gill pushed the Goose Walk booty his way, thoroughly fed up with him whinging all evening.

  ‘I’m disappointed Petra couldn’t see her way to coming out with us tonight.’ Brian sniffed, deprived of an opportunity to leer at his most elusive and shapely council member. ‘Not very community-spirited.’

  ‘She’s busy writing,’ Gill said tightly, disappointed too.

  ‘And suxting her favourite farmer.’ Paul chuckled.

  ‘I told you that in strictest confidence,’ Gill hissed at her husband, betrayed again.

  ‘Come on, love, it’s only a bit of fun.’

  ‘What is “sucksting”?’ Brian leaned forward eagerly, unfamiliar with Paul’s New Zealand accent, and even more so with what ‘sext’ meant.

  ‘I’m sure you can work it out, Brian.’ Paul winked, inadvertently thrilling Brian with a notion that something far more physical was going on.

  ‘Are we talking about Bay Austen? I sensed a frisson at parish meetings.’

  ‘It’s been blown out of all proportion,’ Gill insisted. ‘Petra’s an absolute sucker for rogues.’

  Brian’s eyebrows shot up. ‘Really?’

  ‘I’ve told her to be firmer with him. It’s like handling a strong-willed horse. If you give him his head, he runs away with you.’

  ‘Has it gone as far as that?’

  She shook her head. ‘She’s nipped it firmly in the bud.’

  Brian winced.

  ‘Bay should just be grateful my wife isn’t suxting him.’ Paul grinned.

  ‘If I was, I’d give him a regular tongue-lashing,’ Gill told Brian, kicking her husband’s shins.

  *

  With Blair now pillion behind her, searching through the bullet-streaks of rain with his big torch, Ronnie raced across Sixty Acres. The family tree loomed dark ahead of them. Behind it, they saw a tail twitch.

  ‘He’s there!’ She dropped the throttle – she didn’t want to scare him off – and coasted up in a big curve. His eyes glowed in the quad’s lights. Soaked through and shaking, he stood his ground defiantly.

  ‘You’d be brave enough to go to war, wouldn’t you?’ She laughed, reaching for the foal slip and turning back to Blair. ‘This little horse is going to make the stud famous again when he grows up.’

  He was a silhouette behind the torchlight, his voice so low and hoarse it was barely audible in the wind. ‘I thought the Horsemaker was going to do that.’

  ‘Don’t start.’ She turned to run her hands along the foal’s legs, which darted away at a clap of thunder so loud it seemed to rip the air into shreds around them.

  Blair moved closer, leaning against the tree trunk and lowering his torch. ‘If you already knew you were going to call him in, why’d you write what you did to Verity?’

  ‘What are you talking about?’ she asked distractedly, feeling heat in the foal’s knee, finding a raw welt of a graze there.

  ‘You know I’ll never leave her.’

  ‘I know that.’ She glanced round. ‘I’ve never asked you to.’

  ‘She got your letter, Ron.’

  All three of them jumped as lightning forked directly above Lord’s Brook, lighting up Blair’s face, his dark eyes tormented. He turned to leave.

  ‘What letter?’


  As she straightened up, there was a noise like a bomb exploding.

  *

  In the car, Kit swung round in time to see the huge cedar tree split clean in two, sparks flying, its upper branches bursting into flames. Beneath it, the horse, the quad-bike, Ronnie and her companion disappeared as the canopy crashed to the ground.

  Kit searched frantically for his phone before remembering it was in his coat pocket.

  He clambered into the driver’s seat, almost weeping with relief to find Pip had left the keys on the ignition. Who cared if he was banned right now?

  Spinning the car around, he belted into the village to fetch help.

  33

  ‘Ohfuckohfuckohfuck.’ Pip squelched and slithered across the field, tripping over hummocks and thistle patches, pixie boots wedging into hoof holes as she raced to the tree, or what had been the tree moments ago, now a smouldering split totem with its branches collapsed around it. As she ran, she fumbled her phone from her trouser pocket with shaking hands, the fingerprint unlock not working in the rain. A clout of thunder made her duck, the phone slipping out of her grip.

  ‘Ohfuckohfuck,’ She cast around for it desperately, but it must have landed screen side down. Rain dripped in her eyes. Where was it? She stepped back to cast her circle wider. Something crunched underfoot.

  ‘Ohfuck!’ It was completely dead.

  She ran on, approaching the wreckage, a twisted and impenetrable coppice. Close to, the acrid smell of bonfire hit her full in the face, wood-smoke floating through the driving rain.

  ‘Hello! Can you hear me? Hello!’ she screamed, into the tangle of foliage towering over her. ‘Hello!’

  She heard the branches cracking, the Australian shouting, ‘Ronnie! Shit! Ron.’

  ‘I’m fine!’ came that calm, carrying voice. ‘I’m with the foal. We’re trapped and he’s badly cut. Are you hurt?’

  More crashing around and wood splitting. ‘I can see you. Hang on. I can’t move this branch. I can only reach through. See my arm here? I’ll get the flashlight on you. Jesus!’

  Pip lapped her way round the fallen branches, a huge circle, unable to see a way in. She got as close as she could to where she could hear their voices. ‘I’m out here! It’s Pip. Hello! What do I do?’

  ‘Get fucking help!’ The Australian’s deep whip-crack voice was urgent. ‘The foal’s in a bad way. There’s a ton of timber on top of us here. Christ!’ A huge severed branch collapsed further.

  ‘Still okay?’ Pip asked tremulously.

  ‘Stop asking and get going!’ he shouted.

  Ronnie’s voice was more soothing, more logical. ‘You need to get someone with a tractor, Pip. And the vet. Hurry!’

  She must have nerves of steel, thought Pip, admiringly. ‘Um, do either of you have a phone I can borrow?’

  ‘If we did, don’t you think we’d be using them?’ growled Blair.

  ‘Right-oh,’ she called, turning to race for the gate and finding her pixie boots wedged so deep in the mud they might have been set in concrete. Instead of moving, her legs just twisted and she keeled over face-first into the grass. ‘Ooof.’

  As she struggled up again, losing one boot, she felt a stabbing pain in her ankle. ‘Ow!’ She sat down, feeling it tentatively. ‘Ow, ow!’

  Behind her, the urgent voices continued as Ronnie and Blair helped the injured foal.

  ‘We have to tourniquet it!’ he was saying. ‘He’s losing a lot of blood.’

  ‘No – just keep pressure on it. Keep your hand right there. Whoa, ssh, it’s okay, little one. Press down harder.’

  ‘Christ, you’re hurt too, Ron.’

  ‘I’m fine. Let’s focus on this chap.’

  ‘You’re bloody bleeding everywhere! It’s your blood, poor darling.’

  ‘Not all of it. I’ll keep my hand on this, you keep yours on that.’

  ‘That’s what you said the first time we went to bed.’

  Pip cocked her head, listening with interest as she groped carefully around trying to locate her lost boot.

  ‘Hey, gorgeous. It’s okay. It’s all going to be all right.’ Blair’s rasping voice softened, so intimate and so loving. Pip felt hopelessly moved. She could imagine him holding Ronnie as she wept silently into his wide, manly, waxed-cotton chest, like Ralph Fiennes and Kristin Scott Thomas in The English Patient. He really loves her.

  ‘You heard him,’ that husky purr told the foal, shattering her illusion, ‘it’s all going to be all right.’

  The foal let out a shrill whinny.

  ‘Ssh, whoa, it’s okay, I know it hurts.’ Ronnie’s reassurance soothed Pip too as she felt her ankle again. It did hurt and she was sure it was swelling. Cautiously, she made it up onto her knees. A massive fork of lighting stabbed down over Compton Magna village, aiming for the church spire and falling short, leaving a red streak on Pip’s field of vision. Great. Now she was blinded too. More thunderclaps made her flatten herself on the ground. She must overcome adversity and get help. Straightening again, she closed her eyes, psyching herself up for the pain.

  The conversation behind her moved on through the thunder, their voices cracking with emotion and volatility, star-crossed lovers in extremis.

  ‘Are you asking that because you think I’m about to bleed to death, leaving my regrets on your conscience?’ Ronnie’s voice broke with a dry laugh.

  ‘Might as well be frank before you croak.’

  What had he asked her? Pip wondered, as she tried her weight on her foot and winced. Still a bit sore.

  ‘In another lifetime, yes.’

  Yes to what? Pip wanted to shout as she tried a few limping steps and trod on a patch of stinging nettles with her shoeless foot, the burn going right through her wet sock.

  ‘Is that why you don’t care if Verity rumbles us?’

  ‘She won’t, we both know that. Ssh, sweetheart, whoa. Keep your hand on the wound, Blair.’

  ‘I told you she got your letter, Ron.’

  Pip let out a small bleat, lost to the wind.

  ‘And I told you I didn’t write a letter.’ She sounded impatient. ‘Keep your hand on the wound!’

  ‘I bloody saw it. You asked her to let me go.’

  Pip limped closer again, falling over her lost boot. No, no, no! she wanted to shout. That wasn’t what the letter had said at all. It wasn’t Blair she’d asked for, it was the stallion. She should have guessed drunken Verity would get the wrong end of the stick. She strained to listen, wind whipping hair into her eyes.

  ‘Why’d you do it?’ Blair was demanding, sounding more sad than angry. ‘You know what she’s like. She didn’t understand all of it, but she got the gist. She wouldn’t stop beating herself up about it. It took me all my powers to talk her down, and by then she’d made her mind up to do something about it. She’s quite adamant.’

  Ronnie’s husky voice was incredulous, barely audible. ‘I don’t understand anything you’re saying right now.’

  Pip hopped around, pulling on her boot. Now she was going to run. She didn’t want to stay to find out what terrible threat Blair’s aged and alcoholic spurned wife had issued. It was bound to be bad. But her boot, sodden and muddy, refused to go on.

  Blair’s voice was sawn through with mistrust: ‘I was going to storm round and call you out about it straight away, but I had to drive six horses up to Yorkshire and I needed to get my head round it. You don’t hold back, so why say nothing to me? You’ve always known I won’t ever leave her and I’ve always known you don’t want me to, so why do this? Why now? Verity got that letter two weeks ago, and I know we’ve not been alone until today, but I’ve waited all fucking day for you to say to my face what that letter said to her, and you’ve said precisely nothing.’

  Pip got the boot on at last, zipping it up with trembling fingers, backing away.

  ‘Is this why you’ve been so insufferable?’ Ronnie was laughing in disbelief.

  ‘Yeah. Because I figured it out today, when you told me you’d ask
ed the Horsemaker to run the stud.’

  Hang on. Pip stalled. What’s the Horsemaker when it’s at home?

  ‘It’s a bloody clever way to get what you want, I’ve got to hand you that.’ Now he really sounded angry. The sort of muted, murderous, back-of-the-throat fury that usually signalled a silhouetted hand and dagger poised to plunge in a television whodunit.

  Ronnie was still laughing incredulously. ‘What do I want, Blair?’

  ‘The stallion.’ He said it very slowly, a bitter laugh catching so, for a moment, they both sounded politely amused. ‘And guess what? You got him.’

  Pip froze, catching her breath.

  ‘Verity wants you to have the fucking horse back. That’s the trade. She keeps me, you get your stallion back.’

  There was a long pause.

  Pip tilted her face up into the rain in gratitude. Result!

  ‘Aren’t you going to say anything?’ Blair asked eventually.

  ‘Blair, I think we’re losing the foal.’

  In an inner pocket of Pip’s borrowed coat, a phone rang with the 1812 Overture.

  ‘Is somebody there?’ yelled Blair. There was a huge crash as leaves and branches fell aside, a steel-hard shoulder slamming against the biggest one trapping him.

  Pip hurried out of earshot, lifting the phone to her ear as she headed for the path beside Lord’s Brook.

  The voice at the other end was slurred: ‘I am so going to fuck your brains out later, Kit Donne. This is sensational! Get your arse up here! And bring me food, for Chrissake. I feel kinda weird.’

  *

  Up on high pasture, Orla Gomez was embracing her search with gusto, loving the storm, Cordelia on a clifftop with her Lear. Except he was underplaying it totally.

  ‘C’mon, Leicester Square!’ She laughed. ‘What are we looking for again?’

  Lester ignored her, marching on with stiff-hipped dignity. It was like searching with that blue fish in the film Pip was so fond of. Dory, that was it. She was plainly drunk and had no appreciation of the urgency of the situation. He was starting to suspect she might not even be a nun.

  ‘Hey, do you have any candy?’ she called.

  He limped along the hedgerow looking for signs of the foal. His stupid old chest was tighter than ever, the thickening breathing making it hard to concentrate. His inhaler, sucked frantically through Poldark the Musical, was empty.