by Fiona Walker
‘So you are coming back?’
‘Of course I will.’ The blue eyes sparkled. ‘Probably.’
‘Is this to do with Blair?’
The sparkle hardened. ‘Petra, I never stand still. Women in my position can’t afford to.’
‘Well, I think you should.’
‘Thank you. I’ll bear your opinion in mind.’ The ravishing smile reappeared. ‘Now tell me about your night out with Charlie. Did the spark reignite, or are you going to need Zip firelighters, rolled-up newspaper and extra-long matches with the flues let out?’
Petra had been too busy unravelling her own emotional knitting lately to remember that others had theirs sewn up in a brightly patterned sweater they wore like armour. Ronnie wasn’t like her old London friends, who poured out their souls with a third Pinot Grigio, or the Saddle Bags, who spoke bitterly behind their whip hands, like Regency wives muttering behind fans. She was a veteran campaigner, emotionally scarred and rewardingly open. Accustomed to being admired, pursued and kept secret, hers was a code of conduct that most women would abhor, yet she struck Petra as deeply pragmatic as well as unerringly positive. If life dealt Ronnie a marked card, she always found an ace up her sleeve.
‘It was fine,’ she said, a smile creeping onto her face as her eyebrows shot up. ‘More than fine.’
The Gunns, both contrite at their own misdemeanours, remained on their best behaviour both in and out of bed. Last night, after two very large nightcaps at home to get her in the mood, marital sex had turned increasingly giggly and silly until they were rolling around having a whale of a time.
‘Good.’ Ronnie hooked her arm through Petra’s as they headed back. ‘No more Father Willy, then?’
‘No more Father Willy. I kill him off at the end of the book. A jealous mistress poisons him with the old arsenic-Bible-pages trick.’ She kept quiet about a possible haunting plotline she had up her sleeve for the second in the series.
They walked back into a lowering sun, waving at a group of riders out for a blast along Bay’s new three-mile point.
‘He rents it out for twenty quid a pop. The man is Croesus. They’re hunting over it again on Boxing Day, coming up here after meeting in Chipping Hampton.’
‘Do you mind that part of it is your old land?’
‘That my father would have loved to field-master the run makes it easier to bear. Austens look after their land far better than we can afford to.’
‘But press your ear to the ground on Percy land and you can hear hoofs, just like you can hear the sea in a shell. Don’t get that on Austen land.’
‘Oh, I love that.’
‘Stay.’
She laughed. ‘You sound like Lester.’
*
While the women made their way home, the stud was cast in its most golden of winter-afternoon glows, the water racing along its guttering as the last of the snow melted off its west-facing roofs. Lester fed the grey stallion a carrot through his bars – bribery was his new tactic – then headed into the adjoining yard to feed one to old Cruisoe, and went on to find his son. Spirit sauntered up, bright gold in the sunlight. ‘All hopes are riding on you, little fellow. You and some bog-trotter she’s got coming over here. Unless we can make her bloody well stay this time.’ He went into his cottage and picked up the phone that tethered him to the wall dialling out. ‘Mrs Petty, it’s Lester. I have something I must ask of you...’
*
In his attic room at Upper Bagot Farmhouse, Fitz was still studying the threatening message he’d received the night before from Carly’s phone – he guessed the scary husband, her usual spelling and punctuation being of a far higher standard – and deciding regretfully that it was time to move on. He was never going to get long-distance Sophie off his back with a married woman. Deleting Carly’s number, he messaged Dix Wish instead.
*
The last of the snow melted on Christmas Eve, leaving sludgy brown mud skirting the lanes, the few scarves, carrots and twigs on the Green, where snowmen had been, now buffeted by a bitter wind. Unfamiliar cars had been turning into drives throughout the Comptons all day, visiting family spilling out in festive jumpers, throwing open boots to reveal brightly wrapped gifts and weekend bags.
The boxes Kit carried into the Old Almshouses contained no presents, just more books, notes and files. There was always a distracting amount to do in London, but he saw no point in delaying his return with displacement activities. Ferdie was right: the first car alarm had had him itching to be back in the peace of the Bardswolds. He was looking forward to spending Christmas close to Hermia and the project he hadn’t finished in her lifetime. He’d thought of little else but the Sassoon play all day.
He’d already shared seasonal gifts and meals with his children, their Christmas the movable feast typical of a theatrical family. It had always been a secular, understated celebration. Both were working away from London this year, one stage-managing in Pitlochry, the other Victor Hugo-ing in Liverpool. They would share Christmas with their companies in the pocket between today’s early-evening show and the Boxing Day matinee. He’d enjoyed the road trip visiting them, seeing the shows again, sharing his plans over late-night curries, assuring them that the relationship with Orla really was well and truly over, the brief press furore ridden out in glorious isolation. They were happy that he was going to be in Compton Magna for a while – they still thought of it as home in the way Kit had once thought of the Lakes as home until the generation that had raised him there was lost – and happier still that he had company on Christmas Day. Ferdie and Donald had insisted that Kit must share the celebration with them.
‘If you won’t come to us, dear boy, then we must follow you there with the Fortnum’s five-bird roast and a case of Shiraz.’ It was far from the first occasion that the Falstaffian theatrical agent had invited himself to the Bardswolds, this time with actor-husband Donald and their cockapoo Mopsa in tow.
‘You two don’t celebrate Christmas.’
‘We celebrate seeing you.’
‘Nothing whatsoever to do with the fact you’re having your place in Stratford redecorated?’
‘We’ll forgive you for having a suspicious mind as long as you have a hospitable hearth.’
‘The house isn’t very habitable at the moment. There’s an outside chance it might be clean.’
He’d heard nothing back from his message to Pip at Home from Home Comforts, which didn’t come as a surprise so close to Christmas. He’d told Ferdie and Donald to bring hot-water bottles, thick clothes and a bag of kindling.
Her service was beyond impressive, though. The oil tank was full, a fresh load of logs lay beneath a tarpaulin by the store, waiting to be stacked, and the house was spotless. He’d gone shopping en route, battling his way around an out-of-town supermarket for some basic supplies – mostly cask-matured malt – but the cupboards were stocked with tins and packets, the freezer crammed with home-made meals and trays of ice.
Pip’s alter-ego Sabrina ffoulkes-Hamilton was right. She needed to be paid a lot more. He started unpacking his boxes, awaiting the riotous arrival of Ferdie and Donald. He stopped when he saw a crown on the work surface, picking it up to examine the letters crudely painted on each side: V and H.
*
Lester’s eczema – last active when the hunting ban had been passed – had returned with a vengeance since he’d learned Ronnie was leaving, the skin behind his ears, elbows and knees crawling with itches. At Midnight Mass, he sat proud and upright in his favourite pew – which he usually had to himself but was typically crowded with drunken villagers, who treated the annual service like a Christmas singalong – but his body flamed beneath the tweed as though the anger was scratching its way out of him a pore at a time.
Ronnie had declined to come. He felt some prayers should be said for her safety with that big grey brute. Bribery was getting Lester nowhere. The stallion spent all day pacing, wall-biting and board-kicking, like a spoiled brat. He had no manners. Lester had shut t
he top door and retreated to Cruisoe’s box to groom the old stallion, telling himself it was good that the horse was going. He was too messed up, too much trouble. Ronnie was right. Let him go back to his routine in the big German stallion factory. Cruisoe remained dignified, taking no notice of the grey beast shrieking in the next yard. Lester was grateful for the old man’s quiet. Their fight lay ahead. A stranger was coming. They must wait.
He could hear the wind getting up outside the church, howling through the yews and around the churchyard. The horses had all been upset by it.
As the congregation launched into a slurred Lord’s Prayer, Lester fought a furious urge to scratch, his neck straining high above its crisp white collar.
*
Further along the pew, Petra was deliciously tight after a three-bottle family supper and much flirting with her husband, who for once played along – having sex last night had made her brazenly libidinous. Charlie looked very dashing in his long black Richard Gere coat and striped scarf wound as wide as a ruff, his bald head hidden beneath a watch cap that was surprisingly on trend for him, the sliding blue-grey eyes beneath knowing it. There was enough stubble dusting his chin to declare the holiday officially under way.
‘Have we found out yet if the vicar’s a woman or a man?’ he whispered, nodding at Hilary Jolley intoning the amen.
‘It remains the biggest village mystery.’ She closed her fingers through his, grateful that he was unambiguously male, and that tonight would almost certainly have been heading towards another seduction, had she not still to wrap the stocking fillers and slather the turkey in butter and bacon rashers. Christmas sex was always the wafer-thin mint that melted before you tasted it, an overindulgence taken amid excess.
The little village church was packed. There was a big mob of Turners on show, all very well oiled, ready to have a good sing-song. Janine Turner, who had terrifying Santa-hat nails complete with bobbles, was distributing beer and sausage rolls from a coolbox. Pretty Carly and her handsome tattooed husband weren’t with them.
Petra was conscious of the entire Austen clan gathered on the opposite side of the aisle, close to the chancel, an affable army doing their duty in fur-trimmed herringbone in the VIP zone beneath the family plaque. In the furriest tweed of all, hat like a fluffy pouffe, Monique hadn’t stopped tapping a long, skinny thumb on her smartphone. Craning round, Bay had tried to catch Petra’s eye so often he might as well have got out a laser pointer, his flirtation springing up, like the inflatable scarecrows that guarded his winter wheat, terrifying passing horses. She ignored him, empowered because her husband was alongside her, and because her crush was now in the afterlife. Father Willy’s ghost might be haunting virgins’ dreams – her new book’s synopsis was mapped out in her mind ready for her to start work again in the new year – but she was firmly in control.
She reached for Charlie’s hand again and squeezed it. It was cold and sweaty, she noticed, pulling it around her shoulder and snuggling closer, feeling the warm wooziness of the evening’s wine still coursing through her.
The vicar was inviting them to take communion now and Petra watched the devout shuffle up to swallow the blood of Christ. She could have done with another drink, but that wasn’t a reason to shrug off her agnostic doubts or her husband’s warm arm. She could see Bay at the fore, a head above the others, and just for a moment a part of her liquefied at the memory of his kiss.
Glancing at Charlie, her fingers curling into his with playful familiarity, she drew guilty comfort from the thought that she’d kissed her husband this week with far more love and passion for having kissed Bay. He looked very pale, a muscle ticking in his jaw. ‘Think I’ll go up.’
‘You never take communion.’
‘Feeling quite close to God tonight. Good to keep the heavenly insurance premiums up.’ The rare smile flashed and he kissed her hand in a curiously chivalric gesture.
Petra watched worriedly as he loped along the aisle, peeling off his hat, bald head gleaming as he passed under the Advent candles. He was behaving very oddly.
Was lying to yourself in church a sin, she wondered.
In her heart, she knew full well why Charlie was behaving oddly. He was feeling guilty about something too. About someone. About his London life from Monday to Friday that she pretended had no content beyond work, drinks with the boys, sport, TV and sleep.
She jumped as a tall Grim Reaper shadow in a stockman’s coat stopped beside her pew and swooped down on her.
‘Only me.’ It was Gill, plonking herself in Charlie’s gap, pink-cheeked from a similarly wine-soaked evening. ‘No smalls tonight?’
‘I’ve got thermals on.’
‘I meant the children.’
‘They didn’t want to come this year. The candlelit carols were enough. We left our parents trying to explain to Bella how Father Christmas can get his sack through the wood-burning stove.’
‘You got rid of Pip, then?’
‘Gunny’s furious you tipped me the wink about the aunt in Cowes. She was going to adopt her, rename her Araminta and buy her a pony. She actually asked me if I was going to do Pip a stocking as well!’
Gill laughed. ‘Santa will get blown off course in this.’ She shuddered as the wind roared against the windows, the little church seeming to groan. ‘No bad thing – I need him to be late. I’ve still got a mountain of stocking fillers to wrap and mine don’t even believe in the man with the beard any more.’ She stood up again. ‘I’m going to ask God for help.’
Petra closed her eyes briefly, wishing she had more faith. Sod it, she wasn’t letting Charlie get all the forgiveness. And she wanted a closer look at the hermaphrodite vicar. She stood up and stepped out of the pew.
Which was when, with a loud rumble, a slab of plaster as big as a dining table fell from the north transept ceiling and landed where she’d been sitting.
*
‘They evacuated the whole bloody church!’ Janine told Carly, as they crammed badly wrapped sweets and chocolate bars into the kids’ gift sacks, her Santa-hat fingernails making it look like ten little elves were at hard work. None of the Turners were churchgoers but, like many villagers, Janine made an exception for Easter Sunday, Harvest Festival and Midnight Mass – ‘It’s good PR’ – and she’d seen drama as good as Corrie that evening.
‘They reckon thieves must have nicked a load of lead off the roof just before it snowed, but nobody noticed because it’s been covered in white all week. When it melted, the ceiling got soggy and fell in. Going to cost a mint to fix.’
Carly was shocked. She had been in there only last week with Sienna on her knee and Jackson in a buggy, watching Ellis line up with the rest of Compton Magna’s reception class to sing ‘Silent Night’ in the school carol service. ‘Did anyone get hurt?’
‘It’s a miracle they didn’t. Petra Gunn had been sitting right under it – she’d only just stood up. Covered in dust she was afterwards.’
There was a chuckle of laughter from the other side of the room, followed by a bark, and the two women looked across at Ash, who had stopped watching his action movie to listen in, looking over his shoulder at them, wolf eyes bright for once. ‘That’s classic, that is. Serves her right for looking down on the rest of us from that big horse of hers.’ Lying at his feet, Pricey cocked her big, square head as if opening the debate to the room.
Janine’s eyes narrowed. ‘Do you know who took that roof lead, Ash?’ she said suspiciously.
‘Of course he doesn’t!’ Carly jumped to his defence.
Janine was waggling a candy cane. ‘What is it you and Skulley are getting up to when you’re out late at night?’
‘Don’t you dare accuse him!’ gasped Carly.
‘Ducatis are expensive, Carl. ’Sall I’m saying.’
Ash ignored them both, his entire focus on the television again. Janine gave Carly a ‘Told you!’ look.
Carly scowled down at the last of the presents as she crammed them irritably into the sacks. She wasn’t about
to spoil Christmas by kicking up a fuss about it, but she had no idea where Ash had got the money to buy it. Jed’s accusation that her husband was fencing goods played through her mind, but she quashed it.
This time next year would be different, she reminded herself. Ash would be back at college, training to be a farrier. He just didn’t know it yet.
She couldn’t let it rest. ‘What do you and Skulley get up to, Ash?’
‘Stuff.’
She glared across the table at Janine, who was admiring her Christmas nails again.
‘You know my little brother,’ she said, smirking. ‘He doesn’t say a lot.’
‘But what he says means a lot.’ Carly stood up and walked across to Ash, bending over the sofa back to wrap her arms around his shoulders.
‘Merry Christmas,’ he said now, lifting his beer bottle, his eyes not leaving the screen, where a muscle-man with a machine-gun was wiping out everything in sight.
We’ll fix you again, Carly promised silently, as Pricey propped her chin on Ash’s knee and looked up at her with her kind, tawny eyes. Maybe not this year, but we’ll sort that mess in your head out, Ash Turner. She dropped a long kiss into his hair.
58
The gales had gone completely by Christmas morning, adding to the sense of time standing still at the stud, with no wind in the sails to blow them all towards New Year. Still, cool and gossamer misty, the snow of a few days ago was a distant memory.
Ronnie took no pleasure from its tranquillity. Pax hadn’t called. Now that she knew not even her most forgiving daughter would be coming to visit before she left for Germany, Ronnie wanted the next two days behind her. The day after Boxing Day her crossing was booked to Oostende. Today was just another twenty-four hours to tick off the wait. The worst mother in the world was about to tiptoe away carrying her shoes, as she had so often through life.