The Country Set

by Fiona Walker

‘WAIT UNTIL IT’S BOILED!’ Ronnie reached into a cupboard for mugs.

  While the kettle did its gunshot-in-cement-mixer impersonation, Petra tried to relax and look at the many ageing photographs propped up on the dresser, not helped by Wilf going on an excited sniffing patrol around the room, letting out ecstatic, snorty little yelps and moans, brought into high relief as the kettle finally clicked off. I probably sounded like that last night. Petra indulged in another flashback, a self-pitying cold shower of disappointment in herself. This had to stop. She took a deep breath.

  ‘About what happened with Bay—’

  ‘Stop!’ Ronnie appeared in front of her and took her hand. ‘Come this way.’

  Walking at her usual ferocious pace, she led Petra into a narrow corridor and through a glass-sided lean-to crammed with coats, then outside into cold, bright sunlight where her dogs were waiting in a little walled yard. They greeted Wilf rapturously. Ronnie cocked her head and listened for a moment, then nodded as she heard a distant tractor and tugged Petra onwards, through a gate and around to the left, on through another gate into an overgrown walled garden.

  ‘This’ll do.’ Ronnie stopped by a mossy Lutyens bench and climbed onto it. ‘Let’s scream.’

  ‘Here?’

  ‘Here.’ She held out her hand to help Petra up. ‘Ready?’

  Oh, the bliss of letting out every decibel of shame, embarrassment, self-chastisement, guilt, lust, pleasure, thrill and pent-up frustration in an animal roar.

  Beside her, Ronnie was stamping her feet as she screamed, the sound almost existential with anger.

  ‘That’s better,’ she said hoarsely, when they both had no more breath. Calling the dogs from the undergrowth, she marched back inside. ‘Decaff or normal?’

  Petra followed, her throat hurting.

  Ronnie’s mood had lifted enormously. She cracked open a biscuit tin on the kitchen table. ‘Almond thins, courtesy of Pip. Help yourself.’

  ‘I’m so grateful for what you did for me last night, I can’t tell you.’

  ‘Then don’t. It’s such a bore being thanked.’

  ‘But it was so noble, like Lady Windermere. I’m not normally that badly behaved.’

  ‘Oh, I am.’ The infectious laugh. Petra watched as she made coffee, marvelling again at how youthful she seemed. ‘I’ve had a very naughty adult life, as you’ve probably heard, but I do have a few rules of conduct, contrary to popular belief, chief among which is that I do my utmost to protect my family.’

  She settled at the table with the cafetière, indicating for Petra to sit.

  ‘Let me tell you a story, which you’re welcome to use in a book if you change the names to protect the innocent. In the early noughties, my mother had a little Bell’s-palsy stroke and Daddy got in a terrible flap about it. My younger daughter Pax was living here – she wasn’t far off leaving school and had her sights set on competing full time – and she asked me to come down for the weekend. I was based in Yorkshire then, and footloose for once. I suppose I’d have been about your age. I was longing to spend time with Pax, who rode quite beautifully, and it felt as though I might just be finding my way home at last, my parents almost conciliatory. It was also a rather obvious ruse for Pax to introduce me to a boyfriend she’d been so coy about that Daddy was convinced he was Prince William.

  ‘It turned out Mummy was absolutely fine and very put out to find me summoned for a reconciliation over her deathbed. I couldn’t stay at the stud – there was still too much bad blood – so I’d booked myself into one of the out-of-season holiday cottages at Manor Farm, full of gingham and scatter cushions.

  ‘As it turned out, a young Lothario with a penchant for other men’s wives regularly used the cottage I was staying in as a clandestine canoodling spot. Nobody had written me into the reservations book, so when he spotted the lights on that night, he mistakenly thought I was one of his inamorata in situ. I was in the bath at the time, ten minutes into “Rhapsody in Blue” on the radio when he sauntered straight in with a bottle of champagne, as beautiful as can be, already stripped off and about to get in with me. It was all terribly French farce and we ended up wrapped in towels sharing the bottle on the sofa and screaming with laughter. You can guess who it was.’

  Nodding, Petra could also work out how the story ended but, like watching a car crash in slow motion, its inevitability didn’t make its crumpling truths any less shocking.

  Ronnie pushed down the coffee plunger, blue eyes focused glassily on it. ‘Don’t you just wish you could go back and abduct your younger self sometimes? I can see I got a bit tight and was wired by being back, but the truth is I’d never gone to bed with a complete stranger before, and here was this strapping twenty-something with a cock springing from his towel like the Obelisk of Luxor ready to take me there. We were consenting adults, he was supremely desirable and, my God, it cheered me up. I genuinely had no idea it was Bay – we hadn’t got to the name stage. Half an hour after we’d met, we were having the most sensational sex I’d had in years. It was very, very bad behaviour.’

  She poured the coffee, looking up with a knowing smile, which made Petra flush because it was probably obvious she’d been thinking about Bay, his Obelisk of Luxor and sensational sex.

  ‘Did Pax – catch you at it?’

  ‘Not in flagrante, thank goodness. She turned up later with a bag full of food and books and photographs to surprise me. We were finishing off the champagne and were dressed in some sort of clothes by then – not many, I imagine – and she looked terribly pleased at first. I’ll never forget her saying, “You’ve met!” then the look of horror crossing her face.’

  Ronnie got up to fetch milk, deliberately turning away, taking a long time. There was no food in the fridge, Petra noticed, feeling guilty for eating four almond thins already.

  ‘We did full soap opera.’ She sat down again, offering it across, the irony back in her voice. ‘Pax was distraught. It didn’t matter that she couldn’t blame me for deliberately doing it, that I had no idea who he was. The fact was it had happened. None of us knew it was Bay she was seeing because Daddy would have put a stop to it. He hated all the Austens, apart from Hermia. Pax had desperately wanted me onside, someone who’d already fallen foul of my father’s bad matchmaking. Instead I’d jumped on Romeo. It killed what little trust she had in me. I had a long track record of being Bad Mummy, after all.

  ‘Pax was doubly heartbroken to discover she was just one in a long line of Bay’s girlfriends, most of them overlapping, whereas he was her first and only big love. Not that he saw it that way.’ She frowned into her coffee. ‘We might know Bay to be a complete player, but he was just starting out in those days, and he kicked up an awful fuss about Pax being different. They weren’t even sleeping together – thank goodness he couldn’t boast the full Alan Clark – but it was another thing he cited as proof of his honourable intentions.

  ‘I left that night. My beautiful, fearless redheaded girl ran away not long afterwards. She junked in horses as a career and went to live with her brother in London. I don’t think Daddy ever knew the full story, but you can imagine his thoughts on the matter. The rumours certainly did the rounds. First I’d broken Johnny’s heart, now Pax’s, the two people Daddy had hoped to entrust with his beloved stud. Both chances wrecked by me. I wrote Pax letter after letter, drove to London to see her, but she couldn’t forgive me. We still barely speak fourteen years later.’

  ‘Surely she can’t still blame you for a genuine mistake.’

  ‘She loved him. That sort of blame has a long tail. And Bay knew full well who I was that night. Which puts a big sting in the tail.’

  ‘How do you know that?’

  ‘Because he said my name out loud in bed, more than once. I didn’t even think about it at the time. It was only afterwards it occurred to me I hadn’t told him who I was.’

  Petra, who had just helped herself to another biscuit, felt it melt in her mouth like a communion wafer as his badness sank in. ‘The shit.’


  ‘Bay can’t help himself. Some men are like that. He has an override switch that simply bypasses morality if he thinks he can get away with it. I did try to warn you.’

  ‘I know. I’m sorry. You took my hit last night.’

  ‘I don’t have a husband and young children.’

  Now seeing Charlie, Fitz, Ed and the girls in her mind’s eye, choir-like and haloed, Petra let out a nervous squawk, like a pheasant being tracked by two barrels. ‘I couldn’t bear them to find out.’

  ‘They won’t.’ Ronnie picked up the cafetière to take it back to the kettle to refill.

  ‘You saved my face by losing yours. I’m just so sorry.’ Without warning tears welled, turning her eyes into overflowing baths, and she heard her throat make that most shameful of all sounds, the turkey gobble. She tried to turn it into a self-effacing laugh, but the turkey just ran around more hysterically, wattle waggling. Where in hell had all these tears come from? Bloody lack of sleep.

  The cafetière was abandoned on the work surface. Sobbing, gobbling and snorting, Petra found herself being handed a tissue and hugged by someone as small, determinedly cheerful and reassuring as ten-year-old Prudie. ‘Oh, you poor girl. Do you love him very much?’

  Petra sobbed. ‘Bay or Charlie?’

  Two clever blue eyes shone up into hers. ‘Asking that, I rather suspect you’re not in love with either of them.’

  The turkey wouldn’t shut up now. Oh, what a shameful meltdown.

  The hug tightened, the husky little voice as warm as mohair. ‘You are deep in the poo, aren’t you? Men like Bay are shits, and the Cotswolds are a sewer of them.’

  Even in the mêlée of tears and gobbles and streaming nose, Petra felt a fresh dawn of mortification steal over her – not content with snogging one neighbour, she was now snotting on another. She had to pull it around.

  ‘You... are... so... kind.’ She managed to drag out something close to dignity.

  ‘Rubbish. When you lose your reputation round here, you can never find it again, like your virginity or spare car keys.’ Ronnie peeled away to fetch a kitchen roll, ripping off a hunk to hand to her. ‘Now, mop up. I can’t tell you how many times I’ve cried like that, and it really doesn’t go down well in the office.’

  Blowing her nose noisily, Petra managed to smile. ‘Nobody sees me in my office, apart from Wilf. I can see I’m going to have to excommunicate Father Willy and big up Black Tom in the second draft.’

  ‘Who’s that one based on?’

  Petra hesitated. ‘Don’t laugh, but I sort of imagined Blair Robertson with a beard.’

  For a moment, the blue eyes looked terribly sad, then Ronnie summoned the ravishing smile. ‘In that case, Father Willy has some serious competition, trust me.’

  47

  For almost a decade, chairman of Compton parish council Brian Hicks had opposed a public village firework display on safety grounds and been consistently outvoted. Ever-more peeved, he struck off this year’s Bonfire Night on the Green by tooting on a vintage horn and reading out a three-page Health and Safety warning, largely for the Turners’ benefit, their dominion over the bonfire and guy being absolute, a duty handed down from father to son, the family’s history of arson prosecutions common knowledge. This year the consensus was that they were in safe hands with Ash Turner, a former fusilier and war hero. Even his name fitted.

  Only Brian’s timid wife, Christine, and village loyalist Barry stood and listened as he listed different categories of fireworks, the rest of the village queuing for mulled cider and pulled-pork baps, toffee apples and roasted chestnuts. Nobody had seen a bonfire so big in the village since the Millennium, thanks to the volume of trees felled by the hurricane. It was as tall as a house, the guy slung halfway up wearing false breasts and one of Petra’s more garish dresses.

  ‘Good job she’s not here to see that,’ Gill whispered to Paul, as they tried to keep tabs on the daughters flirting with the Gunn boys, Boswells and Turners. ‘She’s terribly paranoid.’

  ‘Jolly good of her to volunteer to sit with the nervous pets this year.’

  ‘She’s working, you dope. Her office is crammed full of them, like Doctor Dolittle. She’s probably got that Shetland of theirs in with her.’

  ‘That little bugger’s scared of nothing,’ muttered Paul, as the traditional anthem, the Prodigy’s ‘Firestarter’, struck up over the speakers at the entrance to the drinks tent, a cue for the torch to be lit.

  Excitement built when Ash stepped forward, looking like a beefy Olympic runner. He held it aloft to hear the cheer, then started to walk round the pyre igniting the petrol-soaked rags buried in the wood mountain.

  *

  Carly watched from a safe distance with the buggy, Jackson’s eyes wide and excited below her, blue ear-warmers and beanie muffling him against the bangs in store later, his sister wearing matching girly pink ones. In his favourite orange to match his ’Splorer Stick, Ellis charged around with a group of smalls. Cuffing his head as he passed, Jed came to stand beside Carly with his lanky girlfriend who, with her sly eyes and long, pointed nose, resembled one of his lurchers.

  ‘How’s Pricey?’ she asked, unable to stop herself even though she knew it had started to annoy them.

  ‘Keeps running off,’ the girlfriend sneered.

  Jed shushed her as he cocked his head towards the bonfire. ‘Shit, can you hear that?’

  ‘What?’

  ‘Barking. From in there. Really faint.’

  ‘You’re taking the piss,’ Carly muttered.

  ‘No, I’m not, Carl. Listen harder, love.’

  ‘I hear it too!’ the girlfriend gasped.

  All Carly could hear was the roar and crackle of the bonfire taking off. There was a yelp. Was that a bark or a kid shouting? Could a dog have crawled in there, chasing something, then got trapped? She thought about Spirit under the tree, completely wedged by a great limb of timber. ‘Shit! ASH! Stop it! Put it out! ASH!’

  ‘Gotcha!’ Beside her Jed and his girlfriend doubled up with laughter.

  ‘You fuckers!’ she screamed, as two of the snobbier village reception-class mums brought back a wailing Ellis, who had fallen over, grazing his knees and bloodying his chin, his ’Splorer Stick bent.

  The mums gave Carly’s little group shocked looks, glancing pointedly at the buggy. ‘Is everything okay here?’

  ‘All good, thanks.’ She glared at Jed, who was still laughing, silver Turner eyes creased almost shut with delight.

  Ash thundered up with his flaming torch, cave-man heroic. ‘What is it, bae?’

  He had a small, bearded man at his heels, barking like Fireman Sam: ‘Brian Hicks. Do I need to implement the emergency procedures?’

  ‘Ask them.’ She pointed at Jed and the girlfriend, who set off cackling back towards the cider tent. Ellis was bawling louder than ever, Jackson starting to huc-huc-huc his way to tears of sympathy and outrage.

  ‘I’m going to kill that man if he hurts Pricey,’ she told Ash, reaching down to pick up Jackson.

  ‘Not that again. Not now.’ He stalked off, his swagger different tonight, the shoulders higher, the head set slightly to one side, tension coursing through him. Fireworks, those loud explosions that echoed of battlefields, were his nemesis.

  *

  Huddled by the roasting-chestnuts brazier, fur-trimmed hood and jersey one close together, Gunny and Fitz discussed tactics, letting Ed and Dixie Wish charge round with the girls.

  ‘I think the friendship has stabilised,’ Fitz told his grandmother. ‘I checked earlier and there’s new photo-shares.’ He shuddered. His father had already caught the Sunday-afternoon train back to London, much of his weekend spent out shooting to avoid filial death stares, spousal neglect and maternal lectures. Gunny had skipped seeing Hilary Mantel In Conversation last night especially to corner him watching rugby in the snug while Petra and three of the children were vegging out in front of Strictly at the opposite end of the house. Fitz had kept watch and listened at
the door, half an eye on the score too.

  ‘He knows what he must do,’ Gunny said darkly. ‘If the “friend” isn’t completely out of the picture and barred from all phones by Christmas, he will have a week to tell your mother before we do.’

  ‘Gunny, you don’t think Dad might need somebody to talk to about this, do you? About why he needed to do it, and about Lozzy being perhaps not entirely... female?’

  ‘Don’t be ridiculous, William. She’s just got a deep voice. Now do you want a sparkler? I can live stream it on Facebook.’

  ‘They’re banned, Gunny. You can video me eating a pork bap later, if you like. Excuse me a minute.’ He spotted Carly pushing her buggy past and bounded up to her. ‘Hey! How’s you?’

  She flashed her tightest smile, always colder in front of her kids. ‘Good. Everything sorted now?’

  ‘I messaged you to say so.’

  ‘Sorry. Yeah. Course. Meant to reply.’ She looked anxiously across to the bonfire where her knuckle-scraping hulk of a husband was joining the Turners throwing loose sticks in and muscle-flexing.

  ‘Are you really okay?’

  ‘I said so! My hands are hot, that’s all.’

  ‘You’re kidding? It’s freezing.’

  *

  In Upper Bagot Farmhouse, treating the house pets to a loud nineties medley to distract them from any fireworks, Petra was deriving a certain dark satisfaction from turning Father Willy into a much nastier character: ‘My God is not a jealous one, He is a controlling one,’ he told her, hot breath and dry lips against her slender throat, a fat tongue finding skin.

  Her phone buzzed. She picked it up, still typing with one hand. She’d left it on in case Gunny needed back-up. Petra was grateful to her mother-in-law for stepping into the firing line while she worked an evening shift. Gunny was never easy company, but the week had been coolly cordial. The hints about the menopause had grated, but Petra could hardly point out that all the hot, guilty swooning coincided with short, sweet texts, as now.

  I’ll say it first, shall I? That should never have happened. I’m glad it did. Bx