by Fiona Walker
‘I wouldn’t want to carpet it,’ Japinder agreed, looking at the acres of marble floor.
‘We’ll buy somewhere smaller,’ Seth said. ‘Closer to Bradford. Mostly we’ll live in Mumbai. Until the kids arrive, at least.’ He gave Dollar an encouraging smile.
Mrs Singh’s dark eyes bored into her future daughter-in-law’s, disapproving yet resigned. ‘Japinder and I were hoping he would introduce you eventually. He has clearly been in love with somebody for many years. I threatened him many times that I would choose him a wife and found him many suitable girls in the hope that it would force his hand, but nothing worked. What has changed your mind, Arjan?’
‘She saved my life today,’ Seth took Dollar’s hand and kissed it, ‘and I realized that life is not worth living without her.’
‘Ah.’ Mrs Singh seemed unimpressed. ‘Is that why you are dressed as the Lone Ranger? He was quite obsessed with the TV show as a boy,’ she told Dollar, rolling her eyes at Seth’s ad hoc disguise. ‘And who are all these people, Arjan? Do you know them?’
‘A few,’ he admitted.
‘Then ask them to go home. I would like to go to bed and they are very noisy. What is your real name?’ she asked Dollar.
‘Dulari.’
‘That will be what I will call you. It is pretty. Japinder, wish your son and Dulari good night. Where is our room?’
‘You have sixteen bedroom suites to choose from,’ Seth told her proudly, beckoning for one of his staff to take his parents’ luggage and show them to the best guest suite.
‘Why did you not tell me this is a hotel? Now it makes sense. I would have preferred it if you had booked one that is a little quieter, Arjan, but it has a very attractive lake.’
Seth’s father gave him a long-suffering smile. ‘Cricket match tomorrow, you say?’
Seth nodded. ‘I don’t think it’s exactly Headingley, but it’s the first time I’ve owned my own pitch.’
‘Now you know you’ve made it.’ Japinder grinned, gripping his shoulders. ‘Your mother’s mighty relieved, lad. She was starting to think she might be a fella.’ He nodded at Dollar.
Seth hugged him. ‘Dollar’s everything to me.’
His father gave him a toothy smile. ‘Happen you’ll be a good husband. Your mother’s right about this house, though. It’s far too damned big.’
Kat and Dougie leaned over the gate, watching Sri roll in the moonlight.
‘When I bring Zephyr home, we’ll put her in foal to him,’ he promised.
‘Who says she wants a foal?’
‘You don’t ask horses, Kat. You put them together and see what happens.’
‘Offering them a million doesn’t work, then?’
His eyes gleamed in the half-light. ‘Are you ever going to forgive me for that?’
‘In a year’s time when the estate’s been sold as a country club and we’re totally broke with lawyers on our arses and geriatric goats on the loose round the golf course, I probably won’t forgive you for not doing your job properly.’
‘If I’d done my job properly I’d have been galloping around with a bow and arrow.’
‘That may also feature in the next-year scenario if we can’t afford to eat, although I would prefer it if you stick to hunting fish.’
‘God, I can’t wait to live this year.’ His mouth found hers, moreish and greedy, tasting of night air and naughtiness.
‘Midsummer’s Day,’ she breathed between kisses. ‘Next year.’
‘What about it?’
Their kisses grew more urgent, the gate clanking.
‘Ask me again then.’
‘It’s a promise.’
Laughing with such overwhelming happiness that she could no longer keep her feet on the ground, Kat wrapped her arms around his shoulders and jumped up into his waiting grip, her mouth landing joyfully against his.
‘There is… one thing… I should… probably tell you,’ Dougie said, between kisses. ‘Have you ever heard… of an apple wager?’
Chapter 66
The Eardisford cricket pitch was no longer green. A month of sun had baked the wicket to crackle glaze and the outfield was a crisp bisque.
Having breakfasted on food she thought far too rich and been driven around the estate, which she’d declared very big and rather boring, Mrs Singh settled uncomfortably in a designer deckchair and prepared to snooze in front of a cricket match, grateful for something familiar to criticize at last. Sitting eagerly beside her, Japinder was as excited as he had been when he’d watched his son bat for the first eleven at school. Perched on the opposite side of Mrs Singh, already exhausted from a morning with them, Dollar discreetly pulled out her tablet to surf property sites, then discovered there was no signal. The sooner they got away from Eardisford the better, as long as they moved no closer to Bradford.
The village won the toss and elected to field, then selected their fearsome spinner, Calum the Talon, to bowl. His middle finger was shaped like the bird’s claw after which he’d been nicknamed. He dismissed the handsome opening batsman with his first ball. The crowd cheered the wicket with partisan delight, and a few crueller cat calls.
Dougie took his duck with a heroic bow and good humour, then loped off with a shrug and a smile to Kat, who had been cornered by Frank Bingham-Ince and Miriam, both looking secretive and eager.
‘I think I have a bit of work to do on my cricket and my public image,’ he said to them.
‘Can’t help you with either of those, I’m afraid.’ Frank flashed his debonair smile and lowered his voice. ‘But I hear you might be looking for a job.’
They were both distracted as the crowd let out an admiring sigh and a ball whistled far overhead into God’s Plot.
At the crease, batting third, was a handsome Indian man that the villagers took to be one of the several who were now part of the Eardisford workforce. He prepared to take the next delivery, eyes narrowed behind a high-tech face cage. In whistled a short ball, which he struck easily to the boundary again, this shot lightning quick and low.
‘What’s his name?’ checked a few in the crowd.
‘Singh.’
The delivery that followed was even shorter. This time it cracked away at shoulder height, fast as a bullet.
‘Mine!’ shouted Russ at point, diving for it, his hands cupping a fraction too late. The ball hit his forehead with a crack louder than a wicket splitting. He dropped to the grass like a felled oak.
The bloodthirsty, primeval scream from the refreshment tent woke Mrs Singh in a clatter of fast-folding deckchair as Mags rushed out, tea-towel still in hand, throwing herself down at Russ’s side to check for a pulse. First aid not being one of her strong points, she let out a groan of anguish and turned towards the batsman. ‘You’ve killed him, you bastard! You’ve killed the man I love!’
‘Oh, hell.’ Kat watched in alarm. ‘I think Mags is going to punch the batsman.’
‘Is Russ okay?’ Dougie peered hopefully at his lifeless form.
‘I can see his legs moving, but it looks like Calum’s going to finish him off. Quick!’
While the rest of the village watched agog, Kat raced across the pitch. She brought down Mags just before she tried to smash a fist into the batsman’s face mask.
‘She’s definitely back,’ Dawn said proudly, as she watched Kat walking Mags to Russ, now sitting up and cross-eyed, while Dougie hauled Calum off the pitch and entrusted him to the more strapping earthmen. ‘That’s the old Kat I knew and loved. I hope she’s here to stay.’
‘Are you going to stick around and find out?’ Dair asked hopefully.
‘I think there’s quite a demand locally for Beautiful Dawn treatments.’ She nodded happily, eyes sparkling into his. ‘The village needs me.’
‘I could use a few more. And I heard the new Eardisford tenants are very glamorous. Might bring a few new faces along. Journalists, mostly.’
‘Tenants?’
‘In the big house. It’s being leased. Seth’s a canny operat
or, always has a contingency plan. They’ve been waiting on his call, apparently.’
‘Who are they?’
‘Young couple with a toddler. Can you do a hair weave?’
‘I like bald men, Dair.’
‘I wasn’t talking about me.’ He whispered a name in her ear.
‘You’re kidding! I’m definitely staying. Kat needs me. God knows, those eyebrows won’t stay in shape on their own.’
Behind the peeling white screens shielding the village pitch from God’s Plot and the graveyard, Kat’s eyebrows were riding high as Dougie’s mouth delved ever lower, her giggles muffled in his sweet-smelling hair, her heart thundering close to his soft, exploring mouth.
‘Can you cope with a year of Eardisford’s love triangles and vicious circles?’
‘Geometry was never my strong subject. And who says it’s just a year?’
‘Talk to Frank.’ She drew his face up to hers, pulling him into a kiss that lasted three overs.
‘Remind me, where exactly are your professional players?’ Dollar asked Seth as he came off the field after the twentieth over, his half-century contributing to a healthy but beatable declaration from the estate team of 105 for 8 before tea.
‘I’m sure they’re enjoying their guided tour of Hereford Cathedral.’ He pulled off his gloves, casting a rueful smile over his shoulder at his village opposition coming off the field, all back-slapping cheerfully as they contemplated the victory march ahead. ‘Dougie is right. You simply can’t cheat at cricket.’
‘Rubbish!’ Japinder argued enthusiastically from his deckchair. ‘Every nation cheats at cricket. It’s how honourably you cheat that counts.’
‘I did take out their best batsman – at some considerable personal risk,’ Seth reminded his father, who laughed with ribald approval, waking his wife with such a jolt that her deckchair folded up again.
‘I had the woman with pink hair who tried to attack you in my gun sights throughout; you were perfectly safe,’ Dollar assured Seth in an undertone before turning to extract her future mother-in-law with as much dignity as possible from her snapped mouse-trap of striped canvas.
Watching them, Seth wondered how he could have ever contemplated marrying anybody else.
After a cricket tea of cakes worthy of a televised bake-off, guaranteed to thicken arteries and waists – as well as thicken a few heads thanks to Babs Hedges’ minted cider cup – the rival teams embarked on twenty more overs in which Dougie Everett almost clinched the estate’s victory with bowling so accurate that it seemed he could have taken out the wasps hovering over the pavilion wheelie-bin a wing at a time, only for the assault to be foiled by a hook from Jed the pub chef that sent the ball so high it sailed through the church tower arches out of play and had to be replaced. The new ball had a bounce all of its own making, never going the same way twice.
‘Full of lead shot one side,’ one of the estate’s oldest retainers told Seth wisely as they fielded gully and point. ‘They always do this if we bat first.’
The match came down to the last ball of the twentieth over, fast bowled by diminutive Gut, whose long run up involved a facial expression of such fierceness and a Quasimodo stoop of such impossible angularity that the batsman was still watching open-mouthed when the ball whistled past his gloved fingers and struck the wicket.
‘Howzat!’ Gut threw up his arms.
‘NO BALL!’ shouted Dair, who was umpiring, the low tilt of his Panama making all who watched wonder how he could see.
‘Out!’ yelled the second umpire.
Soon a cacophony of protests and counter protests had broken out.
‘DRAW!’ called Dollar, her deep voice so authoritative it silenced all.
Seth turned at her in horror, thinking that she had pulled out her gun. But she was simply appealing for a truce, her slender arms held wide, calling for Eardisford village and estate to shake hands and declare the match too close to call.
The village ladies were the first to join in with her rally, ‘Draw!’
Soon the earthmen were a bass part of the chorus. ‘DRAW.’
‘Draw!’ The estate gamekeepers and gardeners added their baritone bellows.
‘Draw!’ shouted Mr and Mrs Singh in descant.
‘Draw,’ Seth mouthed at Dougie who was eyeing him from mid-wicket and nodded almost imperceptibly.
Meanwhile the umpires had consulted and were nodding too, Panama dipped to Panama, hands raised, eliciting a great cheer as they led a cavalcade to the pavilion bar.
Dougie admired the bubbling amber trunk of the first pint of beer he had lifted all summer and turned to the man who had just offered him the chance to sample many more such draughts by drafting him into a local institution.
‘You want me to be the Brom and Lem huntsman?’ he asked Frank Bingham-Ince in amazement.
‘New chap we hired broke his leg unloading a horse from a lorry first day out on mounted hound exercise. You’d be helping us out of a spot. Wage isn’t anything to write home about, but there’s accommodation and the best hedge country in Herefordshire.’
‘Can I bring my own horses?’
‘Bring as many as you like.’
Starting to laugh, Dougie took his plane ticket to Dollar. ‘Do you think I could possibly swap this one for an aisle seat for a Friesian stallion?’