A Country Affair

by Rebecca Shaw

  Both of them sensed the tension in the house the moment they walked in. Panic seemed to hang in the very air, but Kate flung down her bag and coat on the hall chair as she always did and marched into the kitchen. For all the world as though time had been turned back four, five weeks, there sat Adam at the kitchen table with her dad and Mia. A strong smell of burned vegetables came from the pans standing on the cooker. A frying pan held crisply burned onions and liver. Adam had a mug in front of him, the tea in it untouched and the milk in it a cold eddy on the top.

  But this wasn’t the Adam they had known. This Adam had a nerve twitching in his cheek, which contorted his face every few seconds. This Adam had beads of sweat on his top lip and clenched hands, and a patch of sweat between his shoulder blades showing through his beige tracksuit.

  “Hello, Kate! It’s Tuesday, so I’ve come to go bowling.” The tightly controlled, precisely enunciated sentences were the words he invariably used each Tuesday, but they sounded very different. This time they were a threat. He hadn’t said, “And you’d better come with me or else,” but the words hung about on the end of his matter-of-fact statement.

  Kate caught Mia’s eye and picked up on the very slight warning shake of her head. Gerry looked paralyzed with apprehension. She had to say it. “I can’t, not tonight.” Adam took a sip of his cold tea. “You may as well know. I’m having some tutoring sessions to help me improve my chemistry grade, and there’s one tonight.”

  “You’d better get your meal or we shall be late. I’ve booked our lane, you see, for half past seven as usual.”

  “Can you not hear what I say?”

  “I’m feeling in good form tonight. I shall be able to give you a run for your money. I’m really looking forward to beating you.” He rubbed his hands together with apparent glee.

  “I’m not going.”

  “Mia! Get Kate her meal. I hate having to rush.” Adam’s cheek twitched rapidly.

  Mia’s voice sounded as though she was in the later stages of strangulation. “She’s already told you she isn’t going.”

  Gerry spoke up, having found his courage now he had Scott to support him. “There’s no one orders my wife about, so you can stop that straightaway. Kate is not going bowling. We’ve told you and now so has Kate. Now clear out . . . and . . .”

  Adam banged on the table with his fist. Some tea in his mug splattered out onto the tablecloth and the stain rapidly spread. “We always go bowling on Tuesdays and that is what we are going to do. Bowling. Right! I’ve booked the lane and we’re going.” His cheek twitched violently.

  Scott decided to enter the discussion. “See here, mate, Gerry’s asked you to leave, but I notice you’re still here. Now bug—clear out. Or do you prefer me to throw you out?”

  There was no reaction from Adam at all. It was as though Scott weren’t even in the room. “I’m afraid I’ve let my tea go cold, Mia. I’d like a refill while I wait for Kate.”

  Scott said loudly, “Right then, mate. O-u-t spells out and out you are going.”

  He grabbed Adam by the collar of his tracksuit and heaved him to his feet.

  Gerry leaped up with the intention of helping Scott with Adam’s departure.

  Mia got to her feet shouting, “Be careful!”

  Kate opened the kitchen door, assuming that Adam would not resist. But he did. He lashed out at Scott, striking him with a frenzied thrust of his elbow on his mouth and splitting his lip. Incensed, Scott proceeded to manhandle him out of the kitchen and down the hallway, with Gerry urging them on from behind by ramming both his fists ferociously hard against Adam’s back. Between them they managed to get him to the front door. It looked like they were losing the battle while Scott struggled to open the front door, but Scott hung on tightly and finally rid them of Adam by planting his safari boot on Adam’s backside and shoving him so that Adam sprawled full length on the path. Gerry slammed the door shut and locked it behind him.

  Mia shouted as she followed them through from the kitchen, “His car keys! He’s left his car keys!”

  “Give them to me.” Scott snatched them from Mia’s hand, pried open the letter box flap and flung them outside onto the path. The snap of the letter box shutting broke the spell of terror.

  Between gasps Gerry, bending over with his hands resting on his thighs, said, “My God! . . . You arrived just in time . . . The fella’s mad . . . completely mad . . .”

  Mia flung her arms round Kate. “Oh, Kate! I was so scared. I thought our end had come.”

  They hugged and kissed each other in breathless relief.

  Scott dabbed at his cut lip and grinned at them. “Good day’s work there. You did right not to tackle him on your own, Gerry. He’s dangerous.”

  “What I can’t understand is why he completely ignored everything we said. Before you came, Mia and I both told him you wouldn’t be going bowling, but it was as if we hadn’t spoken. He breezed in, calling out as he always used to as though it were only last Tuesday you’d been out together. He’s finally cracked, he has, and with a mother like he’s got, it’s hardly to be wondered at.”

  “Dad! When did you meet his mother?”

  Gerry explained Mia’s telephone call and his morning visit to their cottage, and told of his scalp prickling when he went in and the odd unlived-in feeling the cottage had, and of how mad she was. “They deserve each other, they do.”

  Mia, still clinging to Kate, said, “He frightened me.”

  “And me.” This from Scott. “He’s going to do something dangerous, he is. See that muscle twitching?”

  “Could hardly miss it, could we, Mia? It was like that when he came in. We didn’t cause it.”

  “Let’s go and sit down again; and I’ll get your meal for you, Kate.”

  They trailed into the kitchen after her, glad of something positive to do. Gerry peered at the crusted contents of the frying pan with a look of distaste on his face. “I shan’t ever want liver and onions again.”

  “Neither shall I.” Mia, lifting the lids off her burned vegetables, said, “I don’t think I fancy you eating it either, Kate. What shall we do?”

  Scott had an idea. “I spotted a fish and chip place down the road. Why not let me go and get some for all of us? That is, if you don’t mind me eating with you.”

  They welcomed the idea. Gerry prepared to get out his wallet, but Scott pooh-poohed him. “No, this is my treat and after we’ve eaten, I’ll take Kate to her class. Save you a job, Mia.”

  Mia said, “Well, that’s very kind. Thank you for your help tonight, Scott. We shall be forever in your debt.”

  Scott took a bow and headed for the hallway. They heard the door open and as swiftly close. He reappeared in the kitchen saying, “I’ll wait a moment, if I may. He’s only just stood up.”

  Gerry asked, “You mean he’s still lying there?”

  “Looks like a neighbor’s just helping him up.”

  Kate went to the bay window of the sitting room and discreetly peeped out. The neighbor was helping Adam down the path and Adam was moving as though he were sleepwalking. She watched him get into his car and sit doing nothing, then his head went down onto the steering wheel with a jerk time after time, so hard he could almost be thought to be trying to fracture his skull. Her kind heart kicked in and she wished that she could love him as he wanted, and that he were more appealing, and more confident and more . . . well, anyway . . . He wasn’t and he never would be. Not for her, anyway, and in a strange, cockeyed way his desperate actions strengthened her resolve to get to college whatever huge amounts of effort it took her. Not for her a wasted life.

  The others joined her and watched through the net curtain until finally he drove erratically away and they were all left feeling distressed about him but at the same time glad to see him gone.

  Scott took it upon himself to cheer them up. “Right! I’ll get the fish and chips, and be back in a flash.”

  Mia asked him not to bring cod. “Anything but cod. Shall we have wine, Kate?
”

  “You can. I won’t. I need to keep a clear head for my tutorial.”

  Scott dashed away, and Gerry and Kate sat down at the table while Mia searched for an appropriate wine in the cellar. “You know, Kate,” Gerry said, “it always surprises me what a nose Mia has for wine. I don’t know where she gets it from.”

  “Or her painting. Where does she get that talent from? What did her family do, you know, what were they? She never mentions them.”

  “Orphan. Brought up in a council home. She loathed it; that’s why she never talks about it. I can’t understand how she turned out so special. Because she is, isn’t she, Kate?”

  “Oh yes, and not only to you and me. Other people love her too. Except Adam never did. He thinks she’s odd, which she isn’t. Funny that, when you think how odd he’s become.”

  Gerry paused with a fork in his hand and he waved it in her direction. “When I think about it, he’s always been odd at bottom. I can’t imagine why I ever thought him right for you. I have to ask this; does he make you afraid?”

  “He does now. You read in books about people being in denial and I think that’s what he is. He’s denying what’s happened because it quite simply isn’t acceptable to him that he’s lost his job. Without the security of it, you see, he has fallen apart. I reckon his mother knows he’s lost his job, but she won’t face up to it either.”

  “God! She’s a queer one and not half. I know it gets me annoyed sometimes when I can’t find something I want because Mia is so untidy, but I’d rather have that than have it like his mother does.”

  Mia appeared out of the cellar, holding up a bottle of wine. “I’d forgotten we had this. It’s a Miranda Estates Unoaked Chardonnay; should be good with fish. You’ll like this, Gerry. I haven’t enough time to chill it, but we’ll have to put up with that. Look at the time! You’ll be late, Kate.”

  “She’s not to be there for half an hour, Mia. Doing well for you, is she, your tutor?”

  “Dad! She couldn’t be better and when it gets nearer the time, I’m going to go twice a week. She’s determined I shall get an A, and so am I.”

  “Good girl.”

  Scott came back with piping-hot fish and chips, and by the time they’d finished off their meal with cheese and biscuits and fresh fruit, their good humor was restored. So Kate went off to her tutorial in high spirits—life couldn’t be better, she thought.

  But in the early hours of the morning she woke, trembling and afraid, with vivid pictures in her head of destruction and death and skeletons—a nightmare just like those she had had as a child. Her first instinct was to rush for comfort to Mia, but before she could act upon it, Mia was standing by her bed. “Kate?” Their arms were around each other even as she spoke.

  “I’ve had a nightmare like I used to. I’m so frightened.”

  “I know. I know. So am I.”

  They hugged each other in silence until both felt comforted.

  It was Mia who spoke first: “Your dad insists you still mustn’t drive alone, so I’ll take you and collect you every day. I promise. Somehow we’ll sort it, love. Gerry and Scott between them, they’ll sort him. You’ll see.”

  Chapter

  10

  “Joy put her head around the door of Kate’s office and asked, “Are you all right? I thought you looked a bit down when you came in.”

  The look Joy got in response to her question persuaded her to close the door and sit down. She watched Kate fiddle with her pen, make a pretense of shuffling some papers to her satisfaction, and waited for her to reply.

  Eventually Kate answered her: “After we’d taken the kitten to Mr. Parsons, Scott took me home . . .”

  “And . . . ?”

  “Adam was there, for all the world as though nothing had happened and it was Tuesday and we were going tenpins bowling.”

  Kate told Joy everything—each detail of what had taken place—and the relief was enormous.

  “My dear, it must have been horrific.”

  “It was. When Dad went to see him, only his mother was there and she said that we were getting married and buying a house and she was coming to live with us.”

  “Oh, dear! Oh, dear! I don’t know what to say. They must have gone completely crackers. How does your father feel about it?”

  “He’s worried sick and so is Mia and so am I.”

  “It’s the stuff of nightmares.”

  “You see, apart from trespassing here, he hasn’t done anything we could tell the police about. Sitting in someone’s house drinking tea isn’t a crime, is it?”

  Joy shook her head. “I’ll talk to Duncan about it. He sees life from a different angle from most people. He may well come up with an answer. Meanwhile, keep your chin up and take extreme care not to be alone anywhere.”

  “I will. Is Duncan enjoying the kitten?”

  “He most certainly is. We had guidelines about not in the bedroom and mustn’t this and mustn’t that, but all that’s gone down the pan. Tiger rules the roost.”

  “You don’t seem to mind.”

  Joy laughed. “Somehow I don’t, no. The kitten gets through to Duncan in a way human beings can’t. He said last night that he couldn’t understand why he’d never had a cat before. He says cats are private people and so is he, so they match beautifully.”

  Kate smiled. “I’m so glad he’s pleased. I think Tiger will have a very different kind of life from poor little Scott. She’s lined up for rat catching. But Scott thinks that’s a good life for a cat.”

  “It is, I suppose, more natural anyway. Is Scott behaving himself? Oops! That’s none of my business. I’m sorry, I shouldn’t have asked.” She got up off the chair and went to open the door. Looking back at Kate, she said, “In view of Adam’s getting at your computer here and what happened last night at home, which shows he’s getting worse, I wonder if the staff should know, then we can all be on the qui vive just in case.”

  “No, definitely not. Lynne and Stephie would think the whole situation ridiculous and it wouldn’t do my image any good at all.”

  “You’re right, it probably wouldn’t. I’ll press on.”

  As she left, Kate said, “And for your information, yes, he is.”

  “Surprise, surprise! He must be losing his touch.”

  “The perfect gentleman.”

  “My word. Do you sometimes wish he weren’t? Sorry!” Joy’s eyes lit up with fun as only hers could. “Shouldn’t have said that. But let’s face it, he is a charmer, isn’t he?”

  “Oh yes. And he’s proud of it.”

  “He is; you’re right. Keep your chin up about that other, you know.”

  SCOTT would have been highly gratified to have known he was being discussed in such terms by Joy and Kate. But at the time his name was being mentioned, he had other more important things on his mind. Phil Parsons had called him out to see Sunny Boy once more. The foot infection had decided to erupt again and, according to Blossom Parsons’s muddled message on the practice phone, it was worse than ever.

  An animal in pain was anathema to Scott, and he loathed not being successful in curing the bull. There was nothing more certain to destroy the vet/farmer relationship than calling time and again and coming up with one solution after another, and none of them being successful. Still worse, the farmers hated the subsequent bills. He’d done all the right things. He’d scoured his brain for reasons and solutions, and each time he thought he’d succeeded, within two weeks the whole problem had flared up again.

  Crossing the yard to Sunny Boy’s stall, he decided to call in Mungo for a second opinion that very afternoon if he wasn’t operating. At least it would impress Phil, who was rapidly losing faith in him, and no wonder.

  Phil was waiting for him, perched on the stout four-foot-high wall of which the stall was made. “Scott!” He nodded his head at Scott. “He’s in agony this morning. It’s not fair to ’im. I need an answer.”

  “I’m very sorry, Phil. I’ve decided we should have a second opinio
n. If you agree, I’ll ask Mungo Price to come and have a look.”

  “Well, at least he has a brain. I’m beginning to doubt you have one.”

  “Now, Phil, I feel bad enough about it without having a fallout with you as well.”

  “Sorry. But ’im and me are mates. I’ve had ’im since he was born. Born here, he was, in this barn on Christmas Day five years ago. An absolute fluke, he was. I knew the minute I saw ’im he was special.” He hopped off the wall and watched Scott putting on his protective clothing, experience of Sunny Boy having taught him that there was a high chance of being covered in filth before the exercise was over.

  Scott sprang up onto the wall, not taking the risk of drawing the bolts on the stout gate and possibly having Sunny Boy charging out and running him down. He dropped slowly down into the stall so as not to startle poor Sunny Boy, who was standing with all his weight on his three healthy legs, with the fourth touching the ground tentatively.

  In accordance with his strictly imposed rules, Scott went to say good morning before examining Sunny Boy’s foot. He stroked his huge knobbly forehead, admiring the almost mahogany color of his head, which contrasted so strikingly with the snow-white of his nose and jaws, and spoke softly to him. “Now, old chap, things not going so well for you today, eh? Well, never mind, your uncle Scott’s come to make things better.”

  The only reply he got was the stamping of Sunny Boy’s good front feet and a roll of his eyes. The snort that followed appeared more threatening, but Scott delayed moving to his rear for a split second while he . . .

  Sunny Boy took that as Scott’s tacit agreement that he wanted to be tossed.

  In less than an instant, Scott was lifted from the ground and rammed hard against the outside wall of the barn. The pressure on his ribs and especially his lungs was enormous; the thrust of Sunny Boy’s great head having emptied Scott’s lungs of air, he hadn’t even the breath left to shout to Phil to take action. All six feet two of this proud Australian son was rendered totally helpless.

  Hanging there, with his spine in a vice and his feet dangling six inches above the ground, it seemed an age before Sunny Boy suddenly released him and Scott fell down against the wall, heaving great gulps of air into his starved lungs. Whereupon Sunny Boy decided that since Scott appeared to be lying there inviting further action, he would oblige. His great head, with half a ton of bull behind it, butted Scott’s body time and again.