Country Lovers

by Rebecca Shaw

  “Well, you’d better; there’s nothing else. We need to stock up.” Duncan kissed her and asked, “How’s it been?”

  “Rose brought the baby in. He is gorgeous—very fair skin like Rose, but dark haired and so like Dan it’s laughable. And Rose, of course, as slender as ever, looking perfectly lovely. I do envy her. She’s one of those people who, if you called at the house on the off chance, and she was wearing torn jeans and an old sweater and her hair was all over the place and she was painting the ceiling, would still look beautiful. It simply isn’t fair.” She smiled ruefully at Duncan.

  “You look beautiful always. No matter what you wear. You never give yourself enough credit.” Duncan had his back to her, so she couldn’t see if he was sincere or simply teasing.

  “Duncan?”

  Duncan turned to face her. “I’ve put a bottle of your favorite wine in the fridge, so all we need to do now is sit down with a drink and wait. I’ve done the dessert too.”

  “Duncan?”

  But he’d gone into the sitting room and was at the drinks cupboard getting her a vodka and tonic.

  “Duncan? Look at me.”

  When Joy saw his face, she almost choked. He was looking at her as though he couldn’t get enough of her, as though his immense love for her was almost too much for him to bear. His eyes were shining with love for her, for her.

  “Darling! Oh, darling! I’m never fair to you, am I? I don’t know why you keep on loving me as you do.” She held her arms wide, but he shook his head. “Please.”

  “No. Mungo’s still there between us. You will not let him go, will you?”

  “I do try, but then it all comes back again as bad as ever.”

  “I could kill him, if I didn’t like him as much as I do.”

  “Duncan. Don’t.”

  “Both of us, with unrequited love. Ironic, isn’t it? You know at bottom that he’ll never leave Miriam. Doesn’t that hurt?”

  “He doesn’t know how I feel. I never give him a clue. Never.” There was something in Duncan’s face she couldn’t interpret. “Why are you looking at me like that? What are you thinking?”

  “He knows, my love, and has for a while.”

  Joy shot to her feet, horrified by the thought. “I’ve never told him how I feel. It must be Miriam who told him. I can’t believe it of her.”

  It was Duncan’s turn to be shocked. “Miriam knows?”

  Joy sat down again, her legs having gone weak with shock. “She’s known right from the first day she met me. She told me the other week.”

  Duncan stared at her, trying to take in what she’d said, then he threw his whisky down his throat and poured himself another before he answered her. “Well, it wasn’t Miriam who told her husband you loved him.”

  “No one else knows.”

  “Are you sure about that?”

  Did they all know then? Joy felt…Well, she didn’t know what she felt…Did they all whisper behind her back? She’d never noticed if they did. Never. If Miriam didn’t tell Mungo, who did? An awful suspicion dawned on her.

  Ice cold with anger, Joy looked Duncan full in the face. “Was it you?”

  Despite her anger, she noticed Duncan didn’t even have the grace to look ashamed. “Yes.”

  “Yes? How could you? How could you?” This time she leaped to her feet and faced him, her fists hammering on his chest to emphasize her anger. “How could you? My deepest secret and you’ve told him. Why? Why?”

  Duncan gripped her wrists tightly and forced them away from him. “Can you believe I’m capable of jealousy? Me? Laid-back Duncan? Self-absorbed Duncan? That Duncan who lets his life slide by year after year, patiently waiting? Doing his computer programs, salting money away for that wonderful day when his wife finally gets around to loving him, and they can travel the world on a gargantuan honeymoon? Imagine that! Funny, isn’t it?” He released his grip, drank his whisky and walked away from her into the kitchen.

  But Joy couldn’t let what he’d said go without knowing exactly how long Mungo had known. She followed Duncan into the kitchen and asked him point-blank. “When did you tell him?”

  He was lifting Joy’s Revenge from the oven. When he’d placed the dish on the worktop, he said, “That night they came for a drink, and we’d just got Tiger and she paddled in her water bowl. Don’t ask me why I did, but the demon jealousy was sitting on my shoulder that night, and that good-looking-I-own-the-world sod walked in and I couldn’t resist. It gets to sound more like a Whitehall farce every day. You didn’t know he knew, I didn’t know Miriam knew, but you knew she knew because she told you, but you didn’t tell me she knew. He didn’t know you loved him; he told me never ever to tell Miriam you loved him. Now I’ve found out she’s always known, so I needn’t have bothered to keep my lip buttoned.” Duncan spooned the sauce over the chicken, tasted it, and added another spoonful of wine. “Ten minutes more and Joy’s Revenge will be ready.”

  Unexpectedly the thought exploded in her head that the whole situation really had become a farce, as Duncan had said. Joy felt ridiculous. Completely ridiculous. She had become a laughing stock, particularly if everyone at the practice had guessed how she felt about Mungo. She only had to think his name and the feelings she had for him surfaced, but had they become like beloved old shoes that fit beautifully, comfortingly, but now it was time to trash them? Well, she’d brace herself to eat Joy’s Revenge and then see how she felt on a full stomach. Good food always helped to gear up her thought processes, and that night was no exception.

  But the happy atmosphere usually engendered by fine wine and good food didn’t happen. Duncan rapidly became morose and abrupt. No amount of telling him the news of the day from the practice could cheer him.

  “I’m sorry. Duncan?”

  He raised his face from looking at his dinner plate, and she saw the pain there. The skein of his hair, which always fell across his forehead despite his efforts, was brushed impatiently back from his face and he said, “One day, you know, all hope will be gone for us.”

  “Hope?”

  “All hope that one day it will be me you love.”

  “But I do.”

  “No, Joy, you don’t. You cling helplessly to your feelings for Mungo, uselessly really, as well you know. Why can’t you see that?”

  “I can. But I can’t help it. And I do love you.”

  “Not like I want it. Rather more like you’d love a devoted spaniel. Not with fire.” Duncan clenched his fist and held it up and shook it to demonstrate the strength of his feelings. “Not with deep desire. Not with overwhelming desire for me.” He thumped his clenched fist against his chest. “Your love isn’t even a comforting, all-embracing, cuddling kind of love. That might be tolerable. What we have isn’t even that.”

  Joy remained silent, well aware of the truth of what he said. If only she could love him as he wanted. But she couldn’t. “I do try.”

  Duncan’s face registered such disappointment at the word “try” that Joy felt as though she’d been whipped. “Joy! I was fool enough to believe when we married that your love for me would grow, and all it would need was patience on my part. But I’ve worked to fan the flames. Recently I’ve come to realize there isn’t even one small jet of flame to fan. And still the years roll on. I believe you when you say you try, but you shouldn’t have to try! Now…now, I’m reaching a point where I don’t care a damn whether you do or not.”

  “You’ve given up on me? Is that it?”

  Duncan nodded. “You could say that. I’ve waited and I’ve just run out of time and patience.”

  “But what shall I do? What can I do?”

  “Abandon Mungo. Love me instead.”

  “But look at the times you’ve ignored me for weeks on end. When it’s been like living with the walking dead? Work! Work! Work! That’s all it’s been for weeks on end. What about those times? Eh?”

  “It’s never been as bad as that.”

  “But it has. It has from where I’m standing.” />
  “I can’t help it if my work drives me and drives me till I hardly know I exist as a person. It’s the only way I have of earning a living, even though I know I get right to the wire with it, time after time. But then it gets better when I’ve resolved the problems.”

  “Oh yes. It gets better, but not better enough. You’re still withdrawn, still an odd bod. At the practice they know what you’re like—don’t want to go anywhere, don’t want to socialize. They’ve asked you times without number to go out for a drink to celebrate something or another, but Duncan go? Oh no! You’re so arrogant, so self-obssessed, you don’t care what people think of you. Not one jot. And for you to tell Mungo I love him, that…that, I cannot forgive. I bet you enjoyed the telling, didn’t you? Mmm? Relished it. I bet you did. Not caring how much you upset him. Not thinking about how he’d cope, how he’d feel. Oh no!”

  “Why ever should I give Mungo’s feelings even a moment of consideration when he’s stolen my marriage from me? Tell me one reason why I should. Come to think of it, though, there wasn’t anything to steal; it wasn’t a real marriage in the first place, was it? You loved him even then. It’s all been a complete lie. It leaves a very bitter taste. Why should I have to feel grateful if I rouse the smallest response from you when we make love? Make love? Ha! That’s a misnomer if ever there was one. Love. Ha!”

  Joy couldn’t find an answer and wondered how on earth she had arrived at this desolate bleakness of soul. Duncan stood for a moment, looking down at her, then he left the table and went to stand outside in the garden, looking at the lights of Barleybridge far below, hunched up, feeling crucified.

  Joy cleared the meal away and found washing that needed putting in the machine. She needed to take a bath to relax her and was asleep in bed before Duncan came up. When she awoke the next morning, he was gone. A note said: “Gone walkabout. Yours for always, Duncan.” It sounded so final. She was used to his leaving to walk alone to clear his thinking processes, but he’d never written “Yours for always.” Never, ever. When he said “walkabout” he meant walking for the day; sometimes he rang her and asked her to pick him up from somewhere, and he’d be refreshed and more like himself. It always did him good to walk alone for mile upon mile. So perhaps he’d ring her tonight.

  Occasionally he would mean longer than a day, but he had his present contract to fulfill so he’d have to be back. She sighed with relief. Obviously he did mean just for the day. Of course, just for the day. All the same, Joy checked his sock drawer and found he’d taken several pairs of his walking socks, changes of underwear, sweaters. So he was going for a while. Something akin to a pain filled her chest.

  A PHONE call as soon as she arrived at the practice that morning put all thoughts of Mungo and Duncan out of her head. She raced out of her office calling, “Anyone seen Dan? Has he gone?”

  Colin answered her. “He’s here, sorting his mail in the staff room.”

  Joy found him reading a letter from the laboratory, punching the air with delight.

  “I knew I was right! I knew it! This letter proves it.” Dan looked up and raised an eyebrow at Joy. “Yes?”

  “Crispy Chickens?”

  “Yes. Why?”

  “Bridge Farm is protesting because the State Veterinary Service intends culling all the farm’s flock.”

  “Why?”

  “Because I’ve just had a call to say that since Crispy Chickens has now got Newcastle disease and all its flock is about to be slaughtered, there’s a strong chance you might have carried the disease to Bridge Farm.”

  “I knew I was right. The idiots. Anyway, I disinfected myself before I went to Bridge Farm.”

  “They say it’s because of your going straight there, you could have carried it.”

  I’ll ring Bridge Farm straightaway. There’s absolutely no need for that flock to be slaughtered. I’ll tell them I’m standing up for them. It’s wholesale murder it is.”

  Before Joy could stop him, Dan had phoned Bridge Farm and told them his position. He followed that with a call to Bryan Buckland and another to the Veterinary Service. By the time he came off the phone, he was boiling with temper. “It is sheer blind stupidity. Sheer stupidity. I don’t know when I’ve been more angry. Think of all the people who’ve visited, all the lorries that have delivered to Crispy Chickens in the week since I was there. They’ve all to be traced. It’s criminal. Absolutely criminal. There could be an epidemic. What’s the point of reporting a notifiable disease if they can’t recognize it when they see it?”

  Joy tried to calm him down. “Dan! Dan!” By now he was pacing the staff room like a caged lion, planning terrible revenge.

  “There’s one thing for certain—they’re not culling all those chickens at Bridge Farm on my account. I’m not having it. Definitely not.”

  “I don’t see how you can stop it.”

  “Neither do I at the moment, but something must be done.” Muttering threats of drawing and quartering Mike Allport and hanging Bryan Buckland from his extractor fans, Dan stormed out to start his calls.

  “Dan! Don’t do anything stupid, will you? Speak to Mungo first. Right?”

  She heard him call out, “I will.” And hoped to heaven he wouldn’t do anything too damaging. Joy followed him out into the car park. “Look here. Mungo will decide on the right course of action when he’s had a chance to talk things through with you. Don’t whatever you do go to Crispy Chickens, will you?”

  “No, because I might murder Buckland. A whole week! God!”

  “Exactly. So…leave it with me. Right? I mean it!” She began to return indoors but turned back to say, “And whatever you do, don’t go to Bridge Farm either. Do you hear me? Mungo will know what action to take. OK?”

  “Of course, you’re right. But it’s dammed urgent if we’re going to stop them. First, I’m going to see Phil Parsons’s new bull.”

  Dan went off with his list of calls, in no mood to suffer fools gladly. As he turned onto the track that led to the Parsons’s Applegate Farm, he determinedly pushed his anger to the back of his mind. He parked in his usual place, on the track and not in the yard, and changed into his boots before he got out. The farm was just as muddy and chaotic as it had always been, but there was Phil leaning on the gate waiting for him, grinning cheerfully. “Wait till you see this one, Dan! He’s a beauty.”

  Phil’s cat came running to greet him, and Dan bent down to stroke her. “Morning, Scott. Morning, Phil. Well, lead me to this magnificent beast.” Phil led him across the filthy yard into the barn he’d renovated with such loving care for his old bull, Sunny Boy. The barn was still immaculate, a fitting setting for a prize bull. The new bull graced it equally as well as its previous occupant. He was young but already showing the signs of a perfectly splendid adult. There was a sheen to his black coat, which only good breeding and good food could have brought about. He was restless, moving about and stamping his feet with a kind of pent-up vigor that was a pleasure to witness.

  Dan leaned on the wall and admired him in silence.

  Anxious for an opinion to corroborate his own, Phil asked, “Well, what do you think?”

  “I think he’s a prime specimen. Indeed. Yes. A prime specimen. Where the devil did you pick him up, Phil?”

  “At an auction. Farmer packing up, selling everything, including the farmhouse—fed up to the back teeth with not making money at the job, and I went along.” He tapped the side of his nose, well, more accurately tapped his balaclava in the area of where his nose would be if one could see it. “Heard a rumor, you know how it is, glad to be shut of the lot and everything might be going cheap. So Blossom and me went along and there he was, one of the last lots. Blossom nudged me and I nudged her and told her not to look too enthusiastic, but you know Blossom. Anyways, things went according to plan, and I got him for a song. What do you reckon?”

  “I reckon you’ve got a gem. An absolute gem. What have you called him?”

  “Blossom’s named him Star. What do you think?”
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  “Spot on. Oh yes. Spot on. Star! I like that.”

  “Well, he is, isn’t he? A star.”

  “He certainly is. Is he friendly?”

  “Hamish is training him.”

  “How is Hamish?”

  Phil looked at Dan as though pondering what to say. “He’s OK. Got over Sunny Boy goring him, but the youth still isn’t up to scratch in here.” Phil banged his chest.

  “Not talking yet, then?”

  Phil shook his head. “Not yet, but Blossom keeps hoping. The youth’s been through something terrible, that’s for sure; what, we don’t know, and we can’t ask the authorities for any help else they’ll be for taking him away and that wouldn’t do. He’s happy and that’s what matters, after all. One day it’ll come when he’s been loved enough.” Phil fell silent after his final perceptive statement, and the two of them leaned companionably on the wall watching Star.

  Dan heard the rapid tap tap tap of Blossom’s high-heeled shoes, and she appeared carrying a tray with three glasses on it. She and Phil were so totally mismatched, Dan found it hard to believe that this peroxided, heavily made-up, dazzlingly dressed, twiglike person could possibly be the wife of stout, rotund, good-natured, shambling old Phil. She held out the tray. “Here we are—take one. A whisky to toast our new bull. Isn’t he brilliant, Dan?”

  “He most certainly is, Mrs. Parsons. I reckon Phil’s got an eye for a good bull. He doesn’t get taken in by a lot of show but recognizes stamina and good breeding when he sees it, and that counts.” Dan raised his glass. “To Star. Long may he reign!”

  “To a perfect physical specimen!” Blossom clinked Dan’s glass with hers and by the twinkle in her eyes when she winked at him, it wasn’t only the bull she was toasting. Time he went, Dan thought.

  “How’s your son and heir, Dan? Doing well? And Rose? We’d love to meet them both.”

  “Well, perhaps sometime when I’m calling I’ll pick them up and bring them along. I’m sure Rose would like to meet you too. Must go. Other calls.” His visit with Star had cheered him considerably, but at the back of his mind was the problem at Bridge Farm.