by Fiona Walker
Where had that come from? She’d been deliberately not thinking about him. She could see she’d have to keep her focus. Her eyes narrowed as she spotted Gunny sidling towards her magnolia with a pair of secateurs. A moment later and her merry LEDs all went out.
*
Lester opened the stable door and Beck – moments earlier a threatening hydra – shot to the back of the stall. He shut the door and the stallion lunged forwards, ears flattened.
Open. Back.
Shut. Forwards.
He’d never known a horse like it. The poor fellow needed to let off some steam and kick up some snow. All the horses in Lester’s care loved snow – this high on the escarpment it was a given. More would dump down later. Best to start him off when it was firm underfoot and wouldn’t ball up in his hoofs. And not the confines of the little round pen where he’d been going out for a couple of hours a day only to march around testing the metalwork as he did in his stable. He needed a couple of acres to work up some speed, roll for fun and snort through the snow.
‘Just got to figure out how to get you out of here first, handsome,’ he muttered, under his breath.
Open. Back. As soon as he picked up the head-collar, the horse charged towards him, ears flat to his head.
Lester only just made it out of the door in time. The bared teeth crashed against the bars and raked down them.
‘I’ve got all the time in the world, friend.’ Turning away from the lunging head, Lester went to fetch a bridle. He hoped Ronnie had a lot of cards to write.
*
The Redhead had plunged around in the snow in her paddock for an hour and was now squealing furiously at the gate to be brought in, hormonal frustration raging. Her only suitor, the entirely unsuitable and not entire Shetland, called lovingly from the stable, making her kick at the gate impatiently.
Petra abandoned the snow-cat she was helping the girls build and fetched the mare in. But she wouldn’t settle, pacing her stable and taunting her tussock sidekick through the grilles, like a maddened ’ho in a penitentiary.
‘You’ll get over it soon,’ Petra assured her, with more conviction than she felt. ‘I understand just how it feels. You need to do something to take your mind off it. Like ironing.’
Excited by the snow, the girls were desperate to go out riding in it. Petra, who remembered feeling exactly the same in her Black Beauty heyday and found it hard to say ‘no’, tried not to think of the mountain of things she had to do. The house was a mess – Gunny’s comments about the filth had hurt especially as Petra paid Janine Turner’s team a fortune to clean it – and her own bed needed changing in readiness for Charlie and the row of kisses. There were yet more piles of the children’s washing, more last-minute cards, presents to sort, and she’d have to go shopping again to cover the weekend because the kids – mostly Fitz – had yet again gone through the fridge like locusts.
He was loading up again when she went in to change into her riding gear, the rest of the leftover tiramisu and a tray of yoghurts under his chin. ‘You’ve only just had lunch.’ She felt her own stomach rumble. Le Mill portions were tiny.
‘This is twosies. Gunny asked for a Nespresso Decaffeinato and Monty Bojangles chocolates in the annex by the way.’
‘She has her own coffee-maker and M&S Belgians.’ She grumpily started putting a tray together for Gunny.
Mozart’s Horn Concerto rang out from her mobile.
‘I have gossip.’ Gill was on her car-phone. ‘And I have ten minutes to get to a laminitic pony in Micklecote in which to – get off the road! – share it.’
Petra glanced across as her children piled in from the garden and started discarding snowy layers and having loud arguments, dispersing in all directions. Wilf was bounding about, spreading snowy paw prints. She glanced at Gunny’s coffee tray, which had only a mug and a plate on it. She shut herself into the larder, breathing, ‘This had better be good.’
‘Karen, our veterinary nurse, was driving past Pip’s bungalow in the early hours on her way back from a Christmas party and saw a man coming out.’
‘You’re kidding?’ She cracked open some Digestive biscuits and started scoffing.
‘You’ll never guess who it was.’
‘Oh, let me try.’ The doorbell was ringing now. She covered the mouthpiece, calling, ‘Will somebody get that?’
There was no reaction.
‘It’ll be an Amazon delivery!’ she shouted enticingly. ‘Pressies!’
Feet thundered towards the hallway. Then Petra heard an altercation as Fitz, hurtling down two flights of stairs, shooed his younger siblings away, insisting he was the only one responsible enough to answer it in case it was an axe murderer.
‘Still there?’ Gill checked, followed by ‘Wally!’ as she took umbrage at somebody’s driving.
Petra crammed back another Digestive. ‘Brian Hicks.’
‘Not even close.’
Petra nearly jumped out of her skin as the larder door flew open and Gunny stood in front of her, her iPad live-streaming a guided blog tour of the house.
Mouthing ‘multi-talking’, Petra smiled, crumbs everywhere, pretending to be scanning the shelves for baking ingredients.
Gunny grabbed the Choccy Stoffy box from the shelf and shut the door again.
‘Sorry, that was Gunny. One of the Turners? Pip likes tattoos and she made quite an impression on the estate last night.’
‘Stone cold no. How’s the widow spider?’
‘Gothic as ever,’ she said quietly, swallowing dry biscuit. ‘And quite possibly bugging our phones, if my son’s obsessive behaviour is anything to go by.’
‘They’re all paranoid at sixteen. Dix records herself on her phone for hours pretending she’s on a date.’
‘Oh, I did that on cassette tapes.’
‘Did you? I must be the odd one then. This – prat! – this snow’s ghastly. You should have ridden with us earlier.’
‘I’m going out with the girls in a sec. How about Flynn the farrier? He’s an indiscriminate shagger and looked wasted last night.’
‘Nope. But you’re getting warmer with indiscriminate shagger. If you’re hacking out on the roads, wear lots of high-vis.’
‘Will do. We won’t go far. Got a stranger on his way home: Charlie.’
‘No, it’s not Charlie either,’ said Gill, leaning on her horn now. ‘Do you give up?’
Petra waited indignantly until the end of the blast. ‘Yes, I give up.’
‘Bay,’ Gill said, with insensitive relish.
‘Really?’ Chest tightening, voice climbing, Petra almost added, ‘My Bay?’ and stopped herself. ‘Is this a wind-up?’
‘Karen’s sure it was him. Looking pretty furtive, she said.’
Petra managed a dismissive laugh. ‘Of course it was. Bay walked Pip home when she got drunk. He probably held her hair back over the puke bucket. She was pretty much out of it.’
‘What time was that?’
Hours earlier. ‘Got to go, sorry! Door again!’
Finally emerging from the larder, she found her daughters standing with their noses three inches from the television screen to get a better view of Airmageddon.
Ed had his feet up on the table, eating a bag of Kettle crisps. ‘Fitz just told someone on the doorstep to fuck off. Wilf stole the Choccy Scoffy box from the table and got it stuck around his nose. Gunny took a photo for her blog. She’s taken the coffee pod machine into the annex. Said she couldn’t wait any longer.’
When Petra opened the front door, she found a bag of vegetables on the step.
She took them up to Fitz to demand an explanation, finding herself talking to a locked door. ‘Why did you tell Kenneth to fuck off?’ She had to repeat it several times before she heard movement, headphones no doubt being removed and porn windows quickly minimised.
‘Who’s Kenneth?’ came a muffled reply.
‘One of our neighbours, Fitz. He’s handed you veggies over the fence in the past. He brought these sprouts and
some kale to the door just now and you told him to fuck off.’
‘He’s the creepy one that flies the drone around.’
‘He used to be an airline pilot. I’m not sure he has a drone.’
‘He does. Big military one, always hovering outside your bathroom window or following you out riding. We call it Domdrone – Dirty Old Man. It was buzzing around out there when you had a bath last night.’ The door opened a fraction. ‘So I told him to fuck off.’
Petra remembered with a shudder the Milk Tray Man rose, which had been delivered by drone in the summer and she’d thought was from Bay. Surely it wasn’t lovely cuddly Kenneth, who looked like Tinker from Lovejoy.
‘Trust nobody, Mum,’ Fitz was saying darkly. ‘There are weirdos out there with all sorts of delusions. You’re in the public eye. You’re bound to be targeted.’
He’d definitely been streaming too many violent conspiracy thrillers. She’d have to fiddle with the parental settings on the router again. ‘It’s very sweet of you to worry about me, but don’t be rude to Kenneth,’ she said. ‘Next time he calls round, tell him I’m... out jogging or something.’
The laughter coming from the other side of the door told her that at least she’d cheered him up briefly – he really was stressing out over the revision. She’d never known him behave so oddly.
*
Getting a bridle on the stallion was a lot easier than Lester had anticipated, as long as one had the dexterity of a young man. He’d seen Ronnie slip the Chifney ring bit on with the double ropes they normally used to lead him, and knew that Beck’s disciplined German training meant that as soon as the reins were looped over his neck, he dropped his mouth for the bit. The secret was to be ready. One had only a split second, and if you messed up, he reared back.
More by luck than deftness, Lester got the bit in first time, hooked over the headpiece and led him away before the big grey could fathom out what was going on. They were across the yard in seconds, between the hedges of the stallion paddock gate and he was loose.
Breathless and slightly giddy, hips aching, Lester watched the stallion race away, astonished by the movement. He’d never seen him fully loose before, the round pen only allowing a few strides before a horse must turn. Here he could high-step through the snow for a hundred yards in all directions. The hind leg was magnificent – high-hocked, far-reaching and extravagant. The horse floated. His progeny would be something else.
‘You are staying here, Beck,’ Lester breathed.
The grey snaked his head, charging through the snow in the high-hedged paddock, dropping his nose to plough through it and then, huge eyes glowing, crumpled ecstatically to roll and roll.
*
Kit pressed himself into the oriel window-seat to get a bar of reception on his phone. Outside, white flakes drifted off the eaves and trees, a weak sun trying to battle through slow-chugging snow clouds. Last night the Cornish whisky bottle had remained unopened and he’d slept for eight hours solid in his old bed, plagued by a nightmare in which he was on stage playing Lear’s final scene, naked except for the red coat. There were no dream-catchers left hanging in the Old Almshouses to stop it.
Kit felt purged, a fresh perspective forming in sobriety. It was time to admit that he’d ground to a muddled halt on the Sassoon project, the need for trance-like inspiration overtaken by the requirement for clear-headed technicality. To stand a chance of finishing it, he must clean up his act and his house, and put a stop to insular self-obsession.
Shoulder against the cold window frame, he called his children to arrange to visit them before Christmas.
‘Are you sure you should drive all this way?’ his daughter fretted. ‘You’ve not been behind the wheel for a while, and you’re always a bit random in bad weather. Do you want me to look up trains?’
‘I am not random in bad weather!’
‘If you come by train you can have a drink on the way.’
‘I don’t need a drink on the way. Or beforehand. I’ll be fine.’
‘Let me look up trains anyway.’
Having thought them oblivious to what Ferdie called his retreat into ‘blues, booze and muse’, Kit had overlooked the fact that his children were close to their Austen cousins and had the heads-up on their father keeping his head down.
‘Heard you flashed at the carol singers last night.’ His laughing son was unconcerned, obsessively wrapped up in a play in which he was cast as a young Victor Hugo. ‘Great way to get Sassoon done. Hugo used to strip off to force himself to stay on task. Only wore a wool cloak. Sis thinks you’re finally grieving for Mum, but she always overanalyses things. I told her you’ll have seen everything at the RSC by now and got the bar bills to prove it. Am I right?’
Grateful to be reacquainted with his modus operandi, Kit called Ferdie to arrange to meet in Stratford before he left the Bardswolds.
‘Oh, good! We can bend your ear about Christmas. Donald and I have hatched the five-bird plan.’
‘I think I’ll stay in London for a bit. I need noise.’
‘The first siren you hear will bring you back, mark my words, dear boy. Always knew you’d bed back in there eventually.’
Having taken a month to sleep in his own bed, Kit doubted it. A large spider was watching from its web over his head. He messaged Pip Edwards to say she could finally arrange to get the house cleaned in his absence.
Do you want me to pop round to discuss any special requirements? she replied eagerly. At stud now sorting Mrs Ledwell’s Christmas decs.
No, thank you. Kit imagined a twenty-foot tree in the hall and festoons of wreaths dripping with blood-red berries. Just don’t let anyone touch the notes on my desk.
*
The box of Percy family decorations was finally unearthed in the cellar, which Pip had left until last to search, the image of the Captain’s upended bulk all too vivid in her mind. She carried them up to the office where Ronnie was on the phone – it had been ringing a lot lately, Pip noticed – standing at one of the tall windows looking out at the snow.
‘Kind of you to think of me, but I’m having a very quiet one,’ she was saying firmly, that laugh ever-present in her voice as she glanced at Pip, her face lighting up at the sight of the box. ‘Let’s catch up early next year... Yes, isn’t it just?’
‘My offer’s still open to cook Christmas lunch here,’ Pip pitched hopefully. ‘I’ve lost Mr Thorne and Mrs Bentley, but I’ve still got the others on standby. Please let me do it.’
‘I’m sorry, but it’s still no. Let’s see what we’ve got here.’
Pip was shocked by the battered metal reindeer and chipped glass bells. Ronnie’s children were hardly going to thank her for giving out a few moth-eaten felt robins while she was languishing amid the stud’s riches.
‘Would you like me to pop into Chipping Hampton and get you some book tokens to go with those? I’m going there to stock up on stationery for Mr Donne.’ Three filing boxes should keep his play safely out of harm’s way; she’d have a little read while she was putting it in. ‘He’s going away to visit his children. They’re a theatrical dynasty, like the Foxes. Very clever man. Tricky to please, mind you. Theatre types are very eccentric, aren’t they? And writers are even worse. Look at Petra. Completely scatter-brained.’
*
Petra hurried downstairs with a laundry basket full of her and Charlie’s stripped bedding to find one eager daughter in jodhpurs waiting impatiently by the back door, staring forlornly out at the snow falling, the other draped in front of the television. ‘Has Daddy called with a train time? I left my phone down here. Where is it? Has Fitz got it again?’
The girls looked at her blankly.
‘Can we go now, Mummy, please?’ begged Bella. ‘I’ve tacked them all up and I’ve been waiting ages.’
‘It’s snowing.’
‘It’s stopping again – look. Just round the village block? It only takes fifteen minutes.’
‘Oh, all right. I’ll just go and change. Where’s
Gunny?’
‘Lying down. She says this place always gives her a headache for the first twenty-four hours and that you need a mother’s help.’
‘I have four mother’s helps. You’re called children.’
Fitz was incommunicado behind his door, making no answer when she demanded to know if he had her phone. In her bedroom, pausing between pulling off one set of clothes and putting on another, she tried Charlie’s mobile from the landline to see if he was on a train yet, but instead of a dialling tone heard crackling static. The snow must have taken out the line. Either that or Fitz really was part of an elite espionage squad recruiting over-bright sixteen-year-olds, his cover blown, M15 men in masks about to abseil through the windows at any moment and spring him to safety.
As she replaced the handset, she caught sight of her reflection in the full-length mirror, for once not posing with her stomach held in. Oh dear. A sedentary autumn in a desk chair had taken its toll on the dimples in her thighs and the softness around her middle. It was time to swap her usual wrinkle-bottomed pull-ups for the mustard-yellow breeches bought for her hunting forays last year, uncomfortably thick and stiff, but guaranteed to flatter and flatten bulges. Petra heaved them on with a few high side kicks, relieved that they still did up with effort. A fleece covered her muffin top. If she stood at the right angle, Salma Hayek smouldered back from the mirror. ‘Happy Christmas, Charlie.’
‘You probably need to see those from this angle,’ said Gunny, from the door. ‘Do you have a spare iPhone charger?’
*
The dream-catchers on Hermia’s grave held several inches of snow, the vivid imaginary journeys that Kit had been on while napping and day-sleeping all month already forgotten.
He dusted them off and gathered them in his farm-shop Bag for Life, abandoning the idea of trailing across to the Austens’ overpriced emporium to buy a Christmas hamper for Ferdie and Donald.
The snow was a lot thicker than he’d realised and there were no boots in the Old Almshouses without big holes in them. Nor did he want to risk bumping into his brother-in-law or, worse, Ronnie Percy again.