The Country Set

by Fiona Walker

  Carly got her sleeping children out of the car, put the guinea-pig boxes on top of the buggy and wheeled them all into the garden.

  Ash had left the hutch where he’d set it down, still in its plastic wrap. She could see the flicker of the television screen through the window. He was on back on his games console, shooting his way out of a gang crime.

  Carly knew better than to tackle him. It was a way of dissipating anger, of avoiding another fight that went round in circles about him skipping college, about his late nights, about money, about Pricey, about the army. She filled the hutch with sawdust and hay and set the terrified little creatures inside, her heart going out to them, thrust into a cold little house after the companionable warm routine in the pet shop. She knew how they felt.

  She could hear Jed’s dogs howling on the other side of the estate, Pricey among them, her traumatised rebel who had lost focus.

  He was right. She liked animals. Even rodents. Even damaged humans.

  She was going to talk to Jed.

  *

  Pip was in heaven. Opening Christmas presents had come early. In the Gunns’ absence, she’d taken a thorough tour of the house, looking in drawers and cupboards, acquainting herself with the day-to-day, the secret, the squalid and the odd. Families never ceased to amaze her.

  She enjoyed a lengthy session of Call of Duty on the Wii console in the playroom, black plastic gun cases wrapped around the controllers in each hand, double-shooting as she jumped out from behind the sofas and SAS-rolled between doll’s house and space-hopper. Wilf the spaniel watched with interest.

  She found an iDock, with a fully loaded little brick of Charlie and Petra’s lifelong record collection uploaded onto it, put eighties Christmas songs on, piped through speakers everywhere downstairs, and drifted along to Tom Jones and Cerys Matthews singing ‘It’s Cold Outside’ – it was: she’d just let Wilf out and felt her eyebrows freeze over – letting the love sink in. She loved this house; she loved this family. She’d been wrong to transfer her allegiance to Ronnie. Petra’s world was a perfectly self-contained John Lewis Christmas advert.

  Both her phones were on the kitchen island, rattling against the granite as she got more Facebook likes – being a have-a-go hero was great – and now chimed with a message. Kit Donne: Can you make up the spare bed when you go in next week? May have guests soon. Many thanks, KD.

  She texted Ronnie to pass this on, enjoying the power enormously, until the reply came: Who are you?

  She hasn’t even saved my number, Pip realised forlornly, sending a sharp message to Janine to make herself feel better: Almshouse client v. demanding. Change all beds on Mon, air rooms, fluffiest towels.

  She fired up the family Mac that had been left on the kitchen table and started looking through its browsing history, loving the Gunns more and more as she travelled between Barbara’s latest reviews – oh-so-harsh but oh-so-fair – Charlie and Petra’s secret Christmas internet shopping for each other, Ed’s Steam gaming account, Prudie’s vlogger favourites and Bella’s pony sites. Somebody had even googled a present for Wilf. And weird teen Fitz, trapped in his ever-decreasing spectrum of rationality, had searched one name repeatedly.

  ‘You must be Petra,’ a deep voice said behind Pip, shaking with a vibrato of emotion. ‘You don’t know me. I’m Lozzy.’

  Where was the dog? was Pip’s first panicked thought. As she turned to face the intruder, she slid the black Wii controller guns from the table in front of her. ‘Fuck off for ever!’ She aimed them.

  *

  Petra had taken the restricted viewing seat behind a pillar for the RSC show and now had a crick in her neck matched with a pulled muscle in her back because she’d decided it would be romantic to hold Charlie’s hand as they watched the play, a brief, sweet moment of connection negated by the hour and a half of sweaty-palmed discomfort that followed because her arm was at such an awkward angle.

  Back home, windmilling her arm, like a spin bowler at the crease, she went upstairs, passing Fitz charging down them, smiling to himself.

  Pip was in her attic room, looking wan in front of a back-to-back Christmas rerun of Last of the Summer Wine.

  Petra put a cup of tea and a plate of biscuits beside her. ‘How are you feeling now?’

  ‘Soldiering on,’ she said in a small voice.

  ‘Everything been okay here?’

  ‘All very boring.’

  ‘You’ll feel better soon.’

  ‘I already do. Lots!’

  ‘That’s good. Charlie will run you home first thing tomorrow.’

  ‘But there’s two of you, Petra.’ A hard look, leaving Petra uncertain if she was seeing double or doubting her sincerity.

  She plumped her pillows over-vigorously, then stopped. ‘Pip, what are these doing here?’ She drew out two plastic guns.

  ‘I get scared on my own.’ Her voice shrank. ‘At the bungalow I’m scared all the time.’ She ate a biscuit, watching Compo rattling down a hill in an old pram.

  Petra sighed, folding her arms in front of her chest so the guns crossed, like Lara Croft. ‘Do you still want a big, scary tattooed man to look after you?’

  ‘Do you know one?’ She glanced up hopefully.

  ‘If necessary, I’ll find a blank one and get him tattooed especially.’

  ‘You’re so lovely, Petra. I said that to Bay after the carol-singing, when he was at the Bulrushes. “Petra’s really nice,” I said, “like really, really nice.”’

  ‘You two had a good chat, did you?’ she asked stiffly.

  ‘I didn’t remember anything about him coming back at first.’ Pip selected another biscuit, snorting with amusement as Nora Batty started hitting Compo with a broom. ‘I think I must have blanked it out with the trauma.’

  ‘And Sloe de Vie. Your “Frozen” was up there with Amy Winehouse in Belgrade.’

  Without warning, the big pug eyes filled with tears. ‘Don’t hate me, Petra. Don’t hate me for what he made me show him.’

  Petra sat down on the bed, casting her guns aside. ‘Christ, what did he do to you?’

  ‘When we got back he made a horrible cup of coffee and I showed off all the detective work I’ve done online about people in the village. He loved that, especially the stuff about the Percys. While he was looking at it, I cleaned my teeth and got changed into my best nightie and told him he could have sex with me.’ The lip wobbled.

  ‘Right.’

  ‘And he made me some more coffee and went home.’

  Petra gave her arm a squeeze. ‘Probably for the best.’

  ‘I know. I was only doing it on the rebound, seeking meaningless skin on skin to make up for JD breaking my heart.’

  ‘This is the man you thought was Ash Turner? The one with the, um, piercing.’

  ‘I loved his piercing. All of it, really. It’s huge. Wait a minute, I still have the pictures on my phone. Here you go. He’s at full mast in this one.’

  ‘Gosh, that is huge.’ Petra stared at it. ‘Really. Very. Big. Christ.’

  Pip looked proud. ‘You don’t get many like that, especially not round here. I’ll share it with you, if you like.’ Her thumb patted the screen.

  ‘Really, you don’t have— Oh. You have. I suppose we could put up a Have You Seen This Willy poster on trees around the village?’ Looking at JD’s extraordinary appendage, she battled an upsurge of giggles.

  There was a jingle of bracelets from the door, and Gunny said, ‘Oh, do hold it there. That’s splendid!’ She had her iPad aloft, the red recording light glowing.

  Petra jumped up. ‘Barbara! Gosh. How long have you been there?’

  ‘Just a ten-second soundbite. It’s going to work perfectly for my Christmasculine vlog. Oh, Last of the Summer Wine! What a treat. Budge up.’

  *

  In the kitchen, Fitz helped himself to a snack – the fridge was always a treasure trove at this time of year, his arms barely able to hold the tall stack of treats he’d unearthed – and closed the door with a satis
fied smile, forehead resting briefly against a painted-tile Tuscany fridge magnet.

  Lozzy was gone for good, he was convinced of it. Good old Pip, the mad cake-baker, had seen her off. The Gunns might not yet be able to evict their unwanted guest from their attic, but she was a gun-slinging heroine when it came to scaring away ex-mistresses. And she’d reassured Fitz that her father’s tall, deep-voiced lover was definitely female. Not that Pip knew Lozzy had been anything to do with Charlie. She’d assumed she was an older girlfriend of Fitz’s, and he wasn’t about to disillusion her. He’d take this one for the team. It was Christmas after all.

  *

  Meeting early the next day, Ronnie walked with Petra and the dogs down through the orchards opposite Upper Bagot Farmhouse, crossing over Lord’s Brook and skirting behind the beautifully sculpted hedges belonging to medieval Compton Manor, its half-timbered grandeur quite separate from the Austens’ farm that had long ago served it.

  ‘It’s been on the market for ages,’ Petra told her. ‘Belongs to a company director whose wife doesn’t like it because it has no land.’

  ‘A Brummy rock singer lived there in the seventies,’ Ronnie remembered. ‘Kept a hostess trolley full of cocaine. We thought he was impossibly glamorous. Complete pervert, as it turned out. Terrifyingly endowed – a friend and I took one look and ran for the hills. Never seen anything like it. Rumour has it he fathered several round here.’

  ‘Could this be one of them?’ Petra handed her phone across with a photo displayed.

  ‘Good God. Quite possibly. Did you take that? Please tell me it’s Charlie.’

  She listened as Petra told of Pip and her Tinder conman. ‘The tattoos were someone else’s, but that seems genuine.’

  ‘I think our rock-star’s reborn.’

  Crossing into Austen land, they indulged in a delighted medley of seventies dance classics – Petra’s superior memory for lyrics making Ronnie laugh in astonishment and complain, ‘You’re far too young to know these songs!’ – then stood on a gate to scream. Crossing back over the brook into the church meadows, Petra kept her in raptures describing her Black Beauty fantasy life growing up in Yorkshire. ‘My parents just didn’t get it. They were modern groovers. That music played all the time at home. I was an Edwardian throw-back. While they were tuning in and dropping out, I was making a bustle out of loo rolls strung together under an old curtain.’

  ‘That’s glorious.’ Ronnie trudged along speedily, hands in pockets, grateful to have found someone who was human Prozac.

  ‘They’re arriving tomorrow, so listen out for Jefferson Airplane blasting from a Prius. How did it go with Pip’s oldies?’

  ‘You were right. They were cock-a-hoop to be let off the hook for Christmas lunch. Yet they all obviously adore her. They grumbled like mad about the lack of baking and gossip. I told them Pip has run off with the vicar and Judi Dench had moved into number two, the Green. Should keep them going until Midnight Mass.’

  They were at the gate by the church, Ronnie’s arm already up in farewell.

  ‘Can you smell something burning?’ asked Petra.

  Smoke was billowing along the lane. ‘That, maybe?’

  ‘Oh, hell, there’s a lot of thatch down there.’

  They reached for the gate at the same time, Ronnie sprinting ahead and glancing back to discover that Petra was one of those people who run slower than they walk, all up-and-down arm action. ‘You go ahead!’ she insisted, pogoing along.

  Ronnie was first to track down its source, a small bonfire in the garden of the Old Almshouses on which a red coat was burning merrily. Kit Donne was heaving something long and heavy, like a roll of carpet, into the boot of his car. Both women retreated across the road before they were seen.

  ‘Do you think he’s murdered someone?’ wheezed Petra quietly, hands on her knees, blowing hard. ‘They always burn the blood-stained clothes, don’t they?’

  ‘I’ll find out, shall I?’ It was about time she made peace for Hermia’s sake. A citizen’s arrest for murder might complicate things, but she’d risk it.

  ‘I’ll keep you covered,’ Petra offered nervously. ‘Cagney and Lacey should split up for this, I sense.’

  Ronnie grinned, then marched across the road. ‘Kit!’

  Clean-shaven and shivering in a thin corduroy jacket and his newsboy cap, he tucked his hands under his armpits, looking far from pleased to see her. ‘Good morning.’

  ‘Have you killed someone?’

  She heard Petra let out a quiet groan across the road.

  ‘Of course not,’ he snapped. ‘They’re Tibetan rugs. I’m dropping them off to be cleaned on my way to London.’

  ‘I heard you’re getting the full service. In fact, I rather fear I’ve been left in charge of it.’

  ‘I’m sorry?’

  ‘Yes, extraordinary, isn’t it? Thought it best to warn you. I won’t snoop, but I know you’re not my biggest fan.’

  He looked at her in silence, jaw offset, clearly trying to work out if this was a wind-up. ‘Wait there.’ He let out a withering sigh and disappeared into the house.

  Ronnie prodded the rugs and turned to the lane with her thumbs up. ‘No stiffs.’

  ‘Are you okay?’ Petra called.

  ‘Perfectly. You go.’

  ‘Okay – see you tomorrow, I hope.’ She disappeared behind the cherry trees.

  Kit emerged just as Ronnie called, ‘It’s a date!’, his brow creasing as he looked around and saw nobody.

  He was carrying a shell-inlaid box. ‘Your letters to my wife. You might as well have them back. I was going to burn them, but I couldn’t face it.’

  ‘Did you read them?’

  ‘Yes.’

  She waited.

  He cleared his throat. ‘Your writing style is very idiomatic.’

  ‘I was hoping for an apology, not a critique.’

  ‘Why should I apologise?’

  ‘Because you accused me of letting her down. Now perhaps you understand why I thought she’d be better off without me.’

  ‘I certainly agree with that sentiment.’

  She turned away with frustration, then back. ‘Can’t we just call a truce?’

  ‘What difference does it make if you and I get on?’

  ‘Because she wanted us to.’

  ‘It won’t bring her back. Our memories of her don’t even cross over.’

  ‘You’re right,’ she said angrily, taking the box to the bonfire. She started to pull out the letters and drop them onto it. ‘Let’s forget all the things she told me about you. About how maddening, stubborn and self-destructive you are. And so, so bad at being alone. About how funny you are, how your brain is this divine fusion of maths and emotions that adds people up in an instant, but rejects anything that can’t be explained logically. About how much I’d love you, ha-ha. About how much she loved you. Christ, she loved you. I have pages of it in the letters she wrote to me, her love for you. My friendship might be worth ashes to you, but I’ve carried her bloody-minded love around for twenty years and I’m not burning that.’ She handed the box back. ‘Merry Christmas.’

  As she turned away, he started to speak, that lilting Cumbrian all too oddly familiar: ‘After the accident, I was so grateful she was alive I didn’t care what they said about managing expectations, about preparing for a much more limited life. She thought she’d get better. I thought she’d get better. But it’s like she was always just around the corner, waiting to come back. She was in there. We kept trying to reach each other. And the longer that went on, the more frustrated and angry we grew. It became this slow-burning grief. I started to resent her, as though she was the accident itself. She hated my martyred patience, my wellness. I was no saint. On really bad days, I thought she’d be better off dead. Now she is, I don’t know how to live without her.’

  Ronnie turned back. His hands were tucked under his arms again, his newly shaven cheeks hollow, eyes tortured.

  ‘Yours was this flawless childhood friendship t
hat she held up, a perfect example of life before pain, unsullied by domesticity, children, sex, anger and trips to bloody neurologists who say your clever mind is for ever broken. All the time the village was closing in claustrophobically. I stood at that door God knows how many times fobbing people off because she didn’t want them visiting. And you had escaped. The one person she held up as this fucking perfect paragon in this fucking idyll had escaped. Had got away.’

  Without thinking, Ronnie stepped towards him, her hands reaching out to touch his arms, then his face, fierce with dignity.

  ‘Sorry, Ronnie, it’s me again!’ called a voice behind the cherry trees. ‘Your dogs followed me home, so I brought them back.’

  With a brisk nod, Kit turned and walked inside.

  56

  It had not escaped the Saddle Bags’ attention, particularly a quietly hurt Gill, that Petra had been seen on more than one dog walk with Ronnie Percy. They were all agog to know the gossip, but Petra was loyally tight-lipped as they headed out in bright, ski-resort sunlight to ride up to the windmill. She was also deeply embarrassed to have broken up what appeared to be a lot more than the casual acquaintance she’d believed it to be: Ronnie hadn’t been around to bitch walk that morning.

  Increasingly short of breath as they kept up a fast trot, the Bags started talking about Christmas visitors, grumbling about their respective husbands’ families.

  ‘Barry’s told his parents we’ll have... lunch with them in Micklecote... on Christmas Day,’ said Mo, between puffs. ‘He knows Mum and Dad won’t come because they only have their turkey after the yard’s done, so I’m going round to cook it for them and Pam after.’

  ‘We’re flying to Poland tomorrow,’ Bridge said. ‘Aleš’s family invited my mum too, but she’s gone stroppy and booked herself on a cruise. I don’t blame her. All Aleš and his brothers talk about is cars, computers and mobile phones. There’s usually at least one fight. And a lot of pickled beetroot.’

  ‘Charlie’s mother is with us for... almost a fortnight.’ Petra laughed breathlessly, grateful to be able to vent her frustration. ‘Which means I am on camera constantly... am redundant, as a failed wife and terrible mother, and in...’ she checked her watch ‘...just over three hours’ time my parents arrive, which signals the start of a political debate that will rage until the day after Boxing Day. And I still can’t get rid of Pip.’