The Country Set

by Fiona Walker

  ‘Some juice, maybe? A biscuit?’

  ‘Now is not the moment for snacking,’ he wheezed, his weak eyes following his torch along the hedge to the paddock rails, blinking in confusion as the hedge disappeared where it was supposed to carry on. There was something lying on the ground there.

  ‘You are one tight-lipped little dude, aren’t you?’ She tripped after him. ‘I could get quite seriously mad at you in a minute.’

  He turned around, furious, and realised she was gone.

  Then he looked down. She’d passed out on the grass.

  ‘Get up!’ he ordered.

  She groaned.

  ‘Get up! You’re intoxicated.’ His voice was little more than a gasp now, the shallow clag of his lungs stealing his breath.

  He reached down to pat her face, finding it icy cold. Taking her wrists to pull her up to a sitting position, he felt her pulse racing. There was a bracelet on one wrist, the little hard disc of a medical emergency tag on it. He had one for asthma – Pip had insisted – although it wasn’t a pretty beaded thing like this. He fumbled for his torch, his lungs barely able to draw a breath.

  ‘Hi,’ she slurred.

  ‘Yes, hello.’ He angled the torch, squinting. Damn. The writing was too small. ‘Now wake up.’

  ‘Hype.’ She slurred again. ‘Hypo.’

  Pulling his chin in and squinting, Lester focused hard on the bracelet tag, the crossword clue half-filled now. ‘Hypo’ as in hypoglycaemia. It read Diabetic.

  ‘Bother.’ His chest tightened more.

  He found her phone in her coat pocket and dialled 999. The emergency services were clearly overrun, but the operator who told him an ambulance was on its way was calm and helpful. ‘Do you have any sugary drinks to hand?’

  ‘I’m in the middle of a field, madam,’ he wheezed, with the effort of being heard over the wind noise. ‘I might have a Polo mint.’ He felt around in his pockets, pulling out a dusty half crescent.

  ‘Can she swallow?’

  ‘No. I think she’s unconscious.’

  ‘Can you locate an insulin pen about her person?’

  He felt in her coat again and found several old tissues and a set of keys on a Boyzone keyring. Pip’s. The nun’s habit had no pockets. ‘No.’ Throat blocked, he tried to cough, just making a rattling whistle.

  ‘Are you all right, sir?’

  ‘Spot of asthma,’ he croaked, looking up at the sky. The helicopter ambulance would never fly in this.

  ‘We’ll get a team out to you as soon as possible, sir. Where exactly did you say your location was?’

  He tried and failed to cough again. ‘The highest... field on... Compton Magna... Stud. There’s a... bridleway track... alongside.’ It appeared to have a large new gateway hacked through its hedge, he wanted to add, but he felt too ill.

  *

  On the sofa in front of the fire in the Jugged Hare, Carly fed crisps to the goose. She was seriously fed up with Ash and his gang. The lads had now drained every alcopop in the place and moved on to Drambuie and Coke. Taking the piss out of each other, trying to remember the order of the Rock Anthems playlist on its third loop and telling rude jokes were the main thrust of conversation. They were all finding themselves hilarious.

  ‘So, Ink, right, so, Ink,’ Flynn was waving his vape stick around with a waft of blueberry fumes. ‘This guy goes into a tattoo parlour, right, and he asks for a tattoo of a fifty-pound note on his dick, yeah, and...’

  Carly tuned out, knowing the joke.

  ‘Guns N’ Roses, “Sweet Child o’ Mine”!’ Hardcase shouted, just before the intro struck up, then stood to take a bow.

  ‘...and he said, “I like to feel my money...”’

  She caught Ash’s eye. He gave her the ghost of a wink.

  ‘...“I like to see my money grow...”’

  His old crew weren’t so different from soldiers, she realised. But it was a lousy date night, and while Ash might have stopped leaping up to take phone calls by the door every few minutes, she could see the huge difference in him from the old days of Fusilier Turner out on the lash with his mates from the base. The long, louche lounge lizard who would once have taken up half the sofa with his big shoulders and big smile sat forward, elbows on knees, feet bouncing. His hands needed to play with something all the time – a bar mat, a folded crisps packet, a coin, turning and flipping and spinning. Every so often he’d stare hard at an object or a person, not really seeing it or them. He couldn’t relax, and he was talking a lot less than he used to, the drink hardly touching him.

  He has no more fun when he’s out than he does at home, Carly thought sadly.

  The others were laughing raucously at Flynn’s punchline. Then they were off on a free-for-all of best lines from movies.

  Carly bit her lower lip and tried not to think about Pricey. It was still hammering down outside, lightning strobing the windows. She hoped she wasn’t terrified as the storm rampaged round her strange new home. Having the other dogs would help, surely. But Pricey didn’t like most other dogs.

  She glared at Ash, hurt that he’d found a solution he must know she’d dislike. He winked again. Then the loudest thunder of the storm so far made him flinch, and just for a moment, a look crossed his face that Carly didn’t recognise, silver eyes bleached with pain.

  It reminds him of tank fire.

  Catching her watching him, he flashed the armoured smile. ‘“Ye’d best start believin’ in ghost stories, Ms Turner.”’ He gave his best Captain Barbossa caw. ‘“Yer in one.”’

  Behind them, the door to the pub swung open, carried by the wind to bang hard against the wall, making everyone turn. Lightning lit the windows. It was the perfect dark-and-stormy-night moment.

  A bedraggled stranger marched in. He was wearing no coat, his sweater soaked through, a black hat making him look like he was from a time gone by. ‘There’s been an accident! Tree struck by lightning! Two people trapped! A horse too, I think.’

  At the bar, wiry-haired vet Gill Walcote spun around on her barstool, complementary glass of Taboo in hand. ‘Whereabouts?’

  ‘Field below the standing stones.’

  That was Spirit’s field. Carly was on her feet too. Ash and his cronies looked up at her in surprise. ‘We’ve got to help!’ she said.

  Ash rolled his eyes. ‘We’ll just get pissing soaked, Carl.’

  She gaped at him in shock. ‘You’re trained for stuff like this, Ash.’

  ‘Not any more.’ His knees bounced up and down, fingers moving a fifty-pence piece around. ‘There’s plenty helping. They won’t want Turners.’

  ‘“The Boys are Back in Town”!’ Hardcase announced, taking another bow as the chords were struck.

  ‘Well, I’m going!’ Grabbing her coat, Carly ran across the room, her hands ablaze.

  *

  ‘Sssh, little one. Whoa. It’s all going to be all right.’ Ronnie kept pressure on the foal’s wound, although he’d stopped whinnying and protesting or trying to get up, stopped lifting his head too now. Bending low over him, she could just make out his breathing through the noise of the storm, an ominous gurgle to it. His blood was still trying to pump past her fingers as she held in place the makeshift pad she’d fashioned with her detachable coat hood. She wasn’t letting go for a moment.

  She swapped hands holding the pressure pad and shook her numb right arm. The space they were confined in was claustrophobically small. If she tried to move more than a few inches, the sharp broken ends of branches caught her, stabbing at her arms, her neck, her face. She could see almost nothing. ‘Sssh, little one. Whoa. It’s all going to be all right.’

  Like a solitary Samson, Blair was trying to pull away the wood and foliage to get to her. It was a hopeless task without machinery, his roars of frustration louder than the thunder, refusing to accept the old cedar had him beat. It had stood for centuries, the amputated branches wide as barrels and now tangled like a vast game of Pick Up Sticks. When he’d hurled himself through, it had sp
at him out, but it wouldn’t let him back in.

  ‘Fucking bastard tree!’

  He was angriest with Ronnie, of course, but they would say no more on it. The love affair was over. They both knew it. ‘Sssh, little one. You’ll be all right.’

  *

  Dripping water everywhere, Kit abandoned Pip’s car at the pub and shared the cab of a Land Rover back to Sixty Acres, driven at breakneck speed by a rough-hewn, red-faced oil drum of a man in moleskins.

  ‘Know you!’ He beamed, as they set off, rain lashing the windscreen and drumming on the roof. ‘Actor fellow from the Old Almshouses, am I right?’

  Kit didn’t bother correcting him, but the wiry-haired female vet crammed between them could mainstream pedantry even in any crisis. ‘Kit’s a theatre director, Barry. That’s like being a huntsman as opposed to a hound.’ She turned to Kit as they swept along the Plum Run and he averted his eyes from the farmhouse on instinct. ‘It’s Gill, by the way. I know you’ve forgotten again.’ He had.

  ‘Emergency services and the Austens are on their way,’ Barry reassured them, as though the two were synonymous. ‘Got a tractor and chainsaws coming too. Your hubby’s fetching the horse ambulance – am I right, Gill? All we need’s manpower. Might have guessed that rowdy Turner lot drinking in the Jug wouldn’t put their hands up. Hardly got enough in here to lift a twig.’ He peered in his mirror at the back of the Land Rover where several villagers and a goose were sliding around on bench seats. ‘Bay will rally his team, I’ve no doubt.’

  Kit had hoped to avoid another reunion with his wife’s family. He peered out as the horizon lit up again, concerned about Orla, cursing himself for being such a coward in storms, and for lending Pip his coat with his phone still in it.

  ‘Do you know who it is?’ Gill was demanding, as they racketed past the Green.

  ‘Who what is?’ He couldn’t remember Orla last eating. She was usually ultra-careful about her sugar levels, but it had hardly been a normal day.

  ‘The two people you saw by the tree in Sixty Acres?’

  ‘Ronnie Percy, I think.’ Whenever he saw that woman, bad things happened. ‘And the Australian man she’s friends with.’

  ‘Good God.’

  Act of God, more like, thought Kit, glaring through the windscreen.

  They swung into the field.

  ‘Fucking hell!’ Barry’s mouth dropped open.

  It certainly looked biblical. The long fissure through the trunk of the cedar tree glowed with burning embers, damp smoke billowing, a lone figure pulling branches away from the collapsed canopy that towered over him. As they drew closer, Kit recognised the Australian, coat shredded, face and hands covered with scratches.

  ‘Thank Christ!’ His voice was hoarse. ‘There’s a woman and a foal under this, both injured. Foal’s in a really bad way. Be bloody careful. I got out, but it’s not stable. Has someone called an ambulance and a vet?’

  ‘I’m a vet.’ Gill strode forwards. ‘Can I get close enough to them to check him over?’

  ‘Not until we move a load of this timber.’

  ‘Then we must get as much of the fallen tree away as we can. Ronnie, it’s Gill! How’s he doing?’ she shouted in.

  ‘Hanging on in there.’ The voice beside the smouldering trunk crackled with its own fire. ‘I can’t stop the bleeding, though. And he’s weak.’

  ‘He needs fluids.’ Gill pushed back her hair hopelessly.

  ‘We can’t wait for the fire brigade!’ Barry took charge, an eager Gloucestershire Falstaff in his prime, bursting out of his Tattersall checks as he took command. ‘They’ll be overrun tonight. We have to do it ourselves, you lot. Everybody grab a branch!’

  *

  Carly joined in the effort to try to move the smaller branches away while they were waiting for the chainsaws. Her hands were soon splintered, the nails Janine had redone that afternoon snapping off, her palms hotter and hotter. As she worked, she could hear the red-faced man in moleskins shouting orders, but the voice that stayed with her was Australian. She could hear him talking to the foal that was trapped in there.

  ‘You’ll be fine, little fella, we’re coming to get you. Hang on in there. You have Badminton to get round in a decade’s time.’ He was clearing debris faster than all the other men and machines combined.

  Another Land Rover roared up, the bearded vet at the wheel, a horse trailer with a green cross on it hitched behind it. It was followed by more pick-ups loaded with chainsaws and a tractor, two lads from Manor Farm, a smattering of villagers with hand saws. A man who announced himself as the chairman of the parish council in a brief speech nobody listened to was marching around with a clipboard and a waterproof pen drawing up a plan of action. Soon they were all sawing, felling, heaving and hauling.

  But it was torturously slow work. There were too many officers taking charge and not enough soldiers to carry timber away. The chainsaw men, struggling in the rain, kept breaking off to cool chains, fiddle with bolts and talk timber, amazed the lightning-struck trunk was still burning.

  ‘Cedar’s a high-resin tree, you see. Like your pines. Good for kindling. Very hot burning, but smokes and spits a lot.’

  ‘Like a Turner,’ cackled one of the others.

  Carly lowered her brows, hearing Ash’s parting comment: They won’t want Turners. It’s no wonder they got bad PR. She was mad at him for refusing to help. She understood he had his problems, big problems, but that wasn’t the man she knew.

  Get some muscle over here pronto or you won’t see my vajayjay between now and Christmas, she texted him furiously, knuckle-flicking her hand afterwards to try to shake off the buzzing heat.

  ‘Bloody cheek, I know, but could I borrow your phone?’

  She look up to find the dark-and-stormy-night stranger looking deathly pale beneath his hat, his wool sweater stretched by the rain, the V plunging too low on a chest dusted with hairs.

  ‘Just one sec.’ PS Bring a spare coat. You have 5 minutes. ‘There you go.’

  ‘Thanks.’

  She went back to work, dragging out great leafy cedar fronds, glancing over her shoulder in delight when she heard a big engine driving up like a bat out of hell, but it was only Bay Austen in his Land Rover, another pompous officer, this one dressed for dinner. He leaped out and surveyed the scene, shrugging a big coat on over his suit to talk to Moleskin Man.

  *

  Kit was grateful the storm had moved far off enough to stop him dropping to the ground with every lightning flash. It seemed to be hammering Le Mill at the moment so he supposed he should be grateful for small mercies, although he wished he knew where the lover he was taking there was. He also wished he knew her cell-phone number by heart. And where the hell was Pip Edwards with his coat?

  Sheltering behind Barry’s Land Rover, he dialled his own number, trying to hear above the buffeting wind and Bay’s loud bonhomie nearby.

  ‘My lads working hard, I hope, Barry? Wish I could stay. Genuinely. Got the in-laws over from Holland and we’re off to the RSC to see a Korean version of Hamlet. I’d hoped they’d say it was cancelled, thanks to this weather, but you know fucking thespians. The show must go on, eh, Uncle Kit?’ He raised his hand in greeting as another round of thunder rolled through the valley. ‘Our Tempest in the tithe barn in a storm like this was hilarious, wasn’t it? Still scared of storms, I see.’

  Pressed tight up against the car now, Kit did him an on-the-phone gesture. But when calling his own number brought no joy, he was forced to catch Bay as he was getting back into his own car. ‘Do you have Pip Edwards’s number?’

  Bay’s handsome eyebrows curled contemptuously. ‘Hardly.’

  ‘Do you know who might?’

  He sucked his lower lip, a roguish smile breaking. ‘Actually, I do. Hang on.’ He pulled out his phone and sent a lightning text. A lightning one came back. ‘There you go.’ He held it up for Kit to copy.

  ‘Thank you, and thank...’ he read the name off Bay’s screen ‘...P kiss kiss, from m
e too.’

  ‘With pleasure. Been looking for an excuse to do just that. You need a coat.’ He took off his huge one, threw it into the back of his car and drove off with a cheery wave.

  Kit retreated to Barry’s Land Rover again, sitting inside it this time to call Pip in the dry, but there was no answer. He tried his own number again.

  There was a tap on the window. It was the broken-nosed Australian, carrying a big roll of rope gathered from a nearby trailer.

  ‘Hey, mate, it might have escaped your notice, but we need all hands on deck out here. Can the Snapchatting wait, maybe? There’s a foal bleeding, and I’m not sure Ronnie’s too clever either.’

  ‘I won’t dispute that,’ he muttered.

  The dark eyes flashed, the rope moved from one broad shoulder to the other. ‘You’re the dill who abandoned his car, arncha?’

  ‘One and the same.’ He flashed a humourless smile, the macho posturing irritating him.

  ‘Well, you can make up for that now, can’t you, mate? Get those soft London hands dirty.’

  Kit looked at him levelly, not sure why they disliked one another so instinctively, just that they did. ‘I thought we’d cleared the “mate” thing up.’

  Blue lights spilled across the field and both men turned to watch them racing along the Manor Farm drive, having cut through from the top lane, strobing in and out of the trees.

  ‘About bloody time!’ Blair barked.

  But when they bounced away behind the hedge line and disappeared from sight, they didn’t reappear again, clearly not intended for them.

  ‘I think it was an ambulance,’ Kit said.

  ‘Might need one of those yourself if you don’t lend a hand, mate.’

  Kit couldn’t tell if this was a threat to his own safety or a reference to his concern for Ronnie.

  The Aussie looked uneasily at the devastated tree. ‘C’mon, ma—’ He cleared his throat. ‘C’mon, have a fucking heart. We’re busting our balls out here.’

  Nodding a truce, Kit climbed out. ‘There’s someone else missing. The woman who was here when the lightning struck, Pip Edwards.’