The Country Set

by Fiona Walker

  The moment she spoke, Carly realised who she was. She was almost unrecognisable as the pale, sodden woman covered with blood she’d caught in torchlight when they’d shared a mission to keep the foal alive. Carly could hear her talking to the Austens, her voice like something out of an old movie, the room still in a collective state of hushed expectation, conversations muted, ears on elastic.

  ‘Any more of that lovely finger food?’ Her bum was pinched again. ‘Famished here and the stew’s run out.’

  ‘I’ll just check, sir,’ she said lightly, leaning into his ear to hiss, ‘Do that again and I’m boiling your balls with the sprouts next Sunday lunch.’

  ‘Good girl.’ He patted her bottom again and she noticed his hearing aid was flashing its replace-battery warning.

  The kitchen was deserted. The caterer and the Scottish groom had sloped outside on a cigarette break.

  She could hear Bay and his wife arguing again in the utility room where the dogs were shut away. Did they never stop? A moment later, Bay thundered out, dripping with the glass of wine that had clearly just been thrown over him, and slammed his way through the back door.

  Monique followed. ‘Did you see which way my husband went?’

  Carly shrugged. She wasn’t about to get involved in a domestic.

  Monique thrust her glass at her. ‘Fill that, will you?’

  ‘Fill it yourself,’ said a light, insolent voice behind them.

  It was the Gunns’ disconsolate teenage son, Fitz. Carly had seen him drifting around earlier, charming oldies, and had kept her distance, her text-message pest on the other side of the social divide tonight. Now, with a bottle of champagne to himself, and a bad-tempered frown, he had to be plastered to speak to the ice queen like that.

  But, to Carly’s surprise, Monique’s pale eyes glittered with mirth and she pressed her lips together in mock shock. ‘I don’t know who you are, okay, but you’d better grow up to be Mr Rochester.’ Picking up a bottle, she strutted back out to the party.

  Carly was open-mouthed. ‘How the hell did you do that?’

  ‘Basic psychology,’ he told her, helping himself to the canapés from the tray she was supposed to be circulating next. ‘She rides big powerful horses all day long who do lots of little delicate things for her. It takes years of training to do that. Like her horses, she needs people to do precisely as she tells them when she tells them, and if they don’t, she trains them and trains them and trains them some more until they do. Old schoolmasters who won’t do it, like her husband, she fights with. Young, unbroken colts like me, who have a lot of spirit, she’s happy to let mature.’

  ‘I thought she’d just have you thrown out.’

  ‘I thought so too,’ he confessed, grinning and eating more canapés.

  ‘You know much about horses, then?’ She didn’t remember him being too clever handling the family Shetland, but neither had anyone else.

  ‘I have no choice. I share a house with two and a half horse-mad women. I had to sit through a lot of dressage when the Olympics were on. I like your gloves.’

  ‘What am I, then? In your basic horse psychology.’

  He ate yet more canapés. ‘A beautiful wild mare corralled with a load of old cavalry horses.’

  ‘I like it!’ She laughed. She’d forgotten how sweet he was, all skinny limbs, big eyes and overstyled hair, like a Manga cartoon, with a crush on her that was misdirected but endearing.

  He lifted the bottle to his lips, finding it empty, head tilting to one side, his smile mad-about-the-boy charming. ‘May I please have another glass of champagne?’

  He didn’t sound drunk, she decided, filling it. ‘Any kid who can carry off a clutch-bag like that deserves a drink.’

  ‘You’re the first person this evening to notice.’ He held it up, a tiny jewelled black thing that had been tucked under his armpit all evening.

  ‘You’re kidding?’

  ‘Seriously. It’s a generational thing. They don’t see what they’re not expecting. Take your bum.’

  ‘I’m sorry?’

  ‘The old boys that kept patting it.’ His voice was light, persuasively articulate. ‘It pissed you off. I noticed, but they didn’t, did they? They mean no harm by it. The goalposts changed after they’d learned the game. To them it’s like patting the dog as it goes past. The dog snarls, they laugh it off. The dog bites, they think it’s a bad dog.’

  ‘You can do one, mate!’

  ‘They’re just showing affection and approval. It doesn’t make it right. It simply explains it. Classic case of can’t teach an old dog new tricks, even when the pack order changes. That’s why I rolled over, balanced treats on my nose and raised a paw out there tonight. You and I aren’t dogs and we know it. Might as well use the fact they can’t see it to our advantage.’

  He reminded her of mentalists she’d seen on television, able to read and manipulate the way people thought by a combination of flattery and deception. Except that he was still just sixteen and highly strung, chewing around a thumbnail and coming out with quite a lot of crap as well as the occasional gem. He’d be devastating in a few years if he didn’t go off the rails first.

  ‘You saying I was right to let those two old pervs pinch my bum?’

  ‘I’m saying you know who’ll be dead first.’

  ‘You’re bloody Malfoy.’

  ‘Poor Draco. I blame the parents.’ He opened the clutch-bag and took out a phone with a flowery case, scrolled through the messages, then put it back, looking relieved. ‘I don’t suppose you want to come outside and burn one?’ he asked, sneaking a thin tin from his pocket and tapping it, eyebrows raised. They were disturbingly wise eyes, like his mother Petra’s. ‘It’s good shit.’

  ‘I’ve got to take these canapés round.’ She held up her tray.

  ‘Fair enough.’ It was only when he stood up and headed for the door, she looked down and realised he’d eaten them all. Leonie the caterer and the Austens’ mincing groom were coming back inside now, reeking of Marlboro Light. The groom swivelled round to check out the boy with the handbag as he passed.

  Carly hadn’t touched dope since she’d married Ash, but suddenly she didn’t care if she stepped off the train. She’d done more than her fair share of the work tonight and had the bruises to show for it. She’d sign up with the waitressing agency tomorrow.

  ‘I’m taking my break now. The casserole’s run out, by the way,’ she told Leonie, following the boy out.

  As she did, wraith-like Monique flew back in, her shirt coming unbuttoned to show collarbones like ladder rungs. She filled a glass of water at the sink and, pinching her nose and turning round to lean back against the counter top, drank it in a series of tiny, self-controlled swallows.

  ‘Ugh.’ She handed the empty glass to the caterer, flipping her hand away to get rid of the drips. ‘I always get bloody hiccups when I’m stressed. If you see my husband, okay, tell him his guest of honour has just turned up with a lot of papers and two bloody dogs, one of which has just bitten his bloody mother. I’ve told her to wait outside.’

  *

  Having spent a long time in the loo, trying to work out where to dispose of a sweaty flesh-tone tangle of Lycra and elastic that resembled something cut out of a colicking horse – the bin was minuscule and wicker and there was no way it would flush – Petra decided she had to brazenly whisk it outside and find a wheelie-bin. Slipping stealthily from the Austens’ guest cloakroom – not easy with a large queue of the heavily champagned older generation forming – she sped into the conservatory and out through its double doors onto the terrace.

  Petra saw the small, elderly dog in front of her only at the last minute. She threw herself sideways, pirouetted out of balance, and – miracle pants flying into a rose bed – grabbed hold of a large stone sundial to stop herself falling flat on her face.

  ‘Well caught!’ gurgled a delighted, husky voice. ‘I thought you were a goner.’

  ‘Me too.’ The bliss of cold air and no restrictiv
e underwear was double heaven. Petra closed her eyes and just breathed for a moment, amazed at the sensation of blissfully cool lungs and backside. Should she try to retrieve her shapewear? she wondered guiltily. It wasn’t a pretty find for whatever poor gardener was digging in mulch next. But she wasn’t going to wear the bloody thing again – sorry, Bridge – and it wasn’t as though she’d sewn in name tabs.

  She heard a light, high-heeled step in front of her. ‘Are you okay?’

  She knew that voice. ‘Absolutely!’ Her eyes snapped open with a bright smile. ‘I’m sorry about that,’ she said, looking round for Ronnie, but she’d gone.

  43

  Carly gave up after one toot of Fitz’s skinny spinner of a spliff, knowing she’d lose control if she carried on and get paranoid about the kids, work, Ash and what a mother of three was doing getting high with a teenager.

  As it was, she let her head whirl just slightly, very enjoyably, and listened as he got paranoid all on his own, talking as he breathed in and out, that languid, folky voice like a self-effacing Ed Sheeran ballad. ‘So, my dad’s been having this affair for months, maybe more.’ Inhale, laugh. ‘Mum doesn’t know – she’s had loads of affairs since they married, but they’re make-believe, y’know.’ Exhale, sigh. ‘It’s that perception thing I was talking about.’ Inhale, laugh again. ‘Dad doesn’t see it. He’s always been pretty self-obsessed and he feels majorly unloved, plus he’s shit at his job.’ Exhale, harrumph. ‘He should be a politician. It’s what he always wanted, but Mum’s pretty left-wing and has an embarrassing job, which makes it hard to become Michael Gove reincarnate, and Gunny – that’s my grandmother – grabbed all the Gunn family money, which makes it harder because going into politics is expensive, so he wants me to do it but I’m basically Lib Dem, which is as hard to admit in my family as becoming a Muslim, a vegan, a country-and-western fan or something.’ Light up again.

  ‘Your dad’s having an affair?’

  ‘Basically. The shit’s really hitting the fan right now. Christmas is coming, always a pressure point, according to the blogs. His... um... girlfriend wants him to leave Mum. He’s, like, “No way”, she’s, like, “If you don’t, I’ll tell your lovely wife what you’ve been up to.” Mum thinks he’s got some case going on in London this week, but he’s just peeling “Lozzy” off the wall. Might not be a real name. Dad calls himself “Chucks”.’

  ‘How do you know this?’

  ‘I’ve got Dad’s old phone – he upgraded last summer. They use an instant messaging app that was still signed to his account on there. I’m a fly on the wall.’

  ‘You didn’t think of deleting it?’

  ‘Would you?’

  She thought about it and shook her head.

  ‘I’m shit scared Lozzy might call his bluff. That would destroy Mum. She comes across as ballsy, but she’s so easy to knock over. She and Dad, they’re pretty much apart as it is. My dad’s a good guy, but he’s let Mum do everything for years.’

  ‘That’s familiar.’

  ‘She kind of takes over like that. She has this way of doing loads of stuff at once and making the one thing you’re doing feel really lame, you know?’ His lighter flamed and he sucked the last glowing pip from the spliff. ‘And now Mum’s got some stupid sexting going on with a man from the village that doesn’t help. I think she’s sending him selfies of her in her knickers. Kids should never check their parents’ phone. There are some things a son can’t un-see. The Egyptian Henai will haunt me. Parents are fucked, aren’t they?’

  ‘Don’t ask me. Mum’s dead, and I haven’t seen my dad since I was eight.’

  ‘Bet you’re a good mum, though.’

  ‘Yeah, sharing a spliff with a boy and his handbag when I should be working.’ She grinned, hugging herself as her teeth started to chatter. ‘My other half’s God knows where and our kids are being looked after by a woman who’s not stepped outside her front door in twenty years.’

  ‘That’s a dedicated childminder. Reliable. Not going anywhere.’ He started to giggle.

  Carly let him, understanding the silliness kick from dope, still close enough to the memory of herself at fifteen, high with mates, that it felt as though she’d fallen asleep then and woken up now.

  ‘Shit, I’m over-sharing everything but this, aren’t I?’ He wiped his eyes, trying to hand her the dead end of the spliff.

  She waved it away. ‘Just a bit, but it’s all good. This is the first meaningful conversation I’ve had since I moved to this place.’

  ‘Then you’re seriously underrated round here as a conversationalist.’

  They looked out at the stars and Carly thanked a few at random that she had another friend. A psycho dog, a colt with a blue eye and now a boy with weird hair.

  ‘Do your parents know you’re gay?’

  ‘Woah, I didn’t know I was gay. Am I gay?’

  ‘Sorry. That was shit of me.’

  There was a pause. ‘I’ve thought about it a lot. I haven’t decided yet. I can’t be a bisexual Lib Dem. That’s so on the fence. Plus I’m in love with you.’

  ‘I think it’s a really brave thing to be.’

  ‘In love with you?’

  ‘A bisexual Lib Dem, you dope.’

  ‘Cool. Dope. Yeah.’

  Something sneezed nearby. They both started as a small dog trotted past them, stopped to look up briefly, then trotted on.

  *

  Ronnie had no intention of hanging around after being banished outside by Monique – who she was certain had caused Enid to nip Viv by ankle-shoving the little dog directly into her mother-in-law’s path – except she’d lost Olive somewhere in the Austens’ huge black garden.

  ‘You could at least help look,’ Ronnie chastised old Enid, who looked unrepentant, sitting on the top step of the terraced walkway watching her peer into the gloom, batwing ears pricked. ‘How dare you nip the hostess?’ Ronnie grumbled. ‘I brought you here to growl at her son. And only on command, if required. You can growl at his wife as much as you like.’ She headed into the dark garden again, pulling off her heels to carry. ‘Olive!’

  *

  A second cauldron of pheasant casserole was being doled out at one table, old-fashioned treacle pudding at another, but Petra still had no appetite even though she’d been liberated from her organ-squeezing pants. Feeling increasingly exposed and indisposed, she’d hoped to make her excuses discreetly and bow out with an early exit, but there was no sign of Fitz anywhere and she was starting to get worried. Nobody had seen him in over an hour.

  She trawled the house, searching, but her son had disappeared as surely as he did at home when his bedroom door closed on a three-day lie-in. She even checked the bedroom being used to store coats just in case he’d crashed out there – he could cat nap anywhere. She helped herself to a few blasts of deodorant she found, with three coats of an unused Dior Rose Bonheur lipstick sample to back off the puckering masses. The Austen house was dangerous territory now, amorous elderly drunks in tweed everywhere, some starting to bid farewell and demand kisses.

  She checked her reflection in the mirror. Her cheeks were now exactly the same dark plum colour as her new dress. She wasn’t just hot, she was steaming, despite losing a layer. Her belief that the older generation’s country-house parties were usually thrown by hard-core impoverished aristos, who made their guests shiver together by open fires, was shattered.

  She sought refuge once more in the oak-framed conservatory that ran almost the whole length of the house on one garden side, a jungle of hothouse flowers decked in fairy lights. It wasn’t much cooler, but at least she wasn’t being winked at by a bunch of titled bores, and if she pressed her cheeks against the glass, she felt slightly less likely to faint. Pushing open the doors again, she breathed in the cold blast. The stars were extraordinarily bright on the horizon, Orion’s belt as tight as the restrictive waistband on the undies abandoned in a rose bed to her left.

  She scraped up her sweaty hair and let the cool creep round her
neck.

  ‘Moni likes a warm house,’ said Bay’s voice, behind her. ‘Every time she comes over here, she turns up the thermostat. My poor parents can’t work it.’

  He was carrying two champagne flutes. He held one out to her. He looked hot too, his hair tousled out of shape, shirt open a button too low so she could see a dusting of chest hair.

  ‘I’m back-pedalling.’ She shook her head, appalled at herself for finding him such an instant turn-on. How was it possible for years of feminist cynicism to melt away at a glimpse of man-hair on a forbidden body?

  ‘Rubbish. Freewheel.’ He took her hand, put the glass into it and lifted the other. ‘To SMCs.’

  She felt her sweat turn icy cold.

  His smile widened. ‘I’m very flattered.’

  ‘Who told you?’ Petra’s mind raced. It had to be Gill, gossiping indiscreetly while digging out a hoof abscess on an Austen hunter – or Mo, after one too many swigs from her hunting flask out with the Wolds. Then she remembered Mitch the postie gossiping with Pip, and her eyes narrowed, blood boiling.

  ‘Who cares?’ His eyes, ridiculously blue and amused, did their little triangle, big triangle thing. Eye to eye to mouth, breast to breast to—

  She retreated behind a potted phormium, Boudicca without her armour now she’d removed the miracle pants. ‘The SMC is over. I’ve gone right off you tonight.’

  ‘Shame – they turned the party lights on for us outside.’ He looked upwards, inviting her gaze to follow.

  Beyond the glass roof, the stars were out so brightly it was like a casino ceiling. Bay walked to the wall switch, turning off the big pendants so they were in near-darkness, the sky spectacular.

  ‘Come here, Petra,’ he said quietly.

  Petra stayed behind the spiky plant, still fuming that he knew about her safe married crush. It didn’t matter that they’d been trading innuendos and hot looks, like randy students, for weeks. Her crush was private, only her flirtation available to him.

  ‘Remind me, where is Mr Gunn tonight?’ He walked towards her through the shadows.