The Country Lovers

by Walker, Fiona

  Although told by Ronnie in a burst of enthusiasm that the Horsemaker could teach her a lot, Carly was shrewd enough to work out that it was Lester who held the key to regular work at the stud – nobody would get on the rollcall who didn’t meet his exacting standards. She needed to find his right side, and get on it fast. Because this morning, surrounded by doe-eyed mares and bright-eyed young-stock, she’d realised that this was the work she wanted to do, no matter how cold and frosty the weather and her mentor. Spending time with the horses made every moment worth it.

  Her favourite, Spirit, was out in a covered barn with his best friend. Now officially a yearling according to her reference book – although Lester insisted sports horses were ‘rising’ until their real birthdays, unlike racehorses who all shared midnight on December the thirty-first, regardless of the month they were born – Spirit had lost some of his cuteness, but none of his beauty. Herding them along a grass track to their turn-out field with Lester and his small, bearded dog, feeling like a proper wrangler, she whooped with joy to see him streak ahead of the others, pure liquid gold, kicking up his heels and skipping fleet-footed over the mud and ruts while the others waded and tripped.

  ‘He’s just the best, isn’t he?’ she said to Lester.

  ‘You’ve the making of a good eye.’

  They stopped to have breakfast just after eight. Lester retreated into his cottage, his offer of toast declined. Carly’s stomach was too knotted with excitement to eat. Taking a mug of tea out to the fields to watch Spirit and take some photos, she found her phone had a bar of reception and called Nan Turner to check she was okay hanging onto the kids a bit longer, and then Ash, just awake, bear-like and not understanding why she wasn’t beside him.

  ‘What are you doing there?’ he demanded when she explained she was at the stud.

  ‘On-the-job training.’

  ‘It’s New Year’s bloody Day. What job? Nobody gets a job on New Year’s Day.’

  ‘Call it magic.’ She thought gratefully back to Bridge’s silly spell. ‘Ronnie said I could help out any time, remember?’

  ‘For free, maybe. It’ll go nowhere. We talked this through, Carl.’

  ‘No, you told me what you thought about it, Ash, and now I’m doing it anyway. I have a right to make up my own mind on stuff. Women can do that. Watch the news.’

  ‘Fuck, were you having some sort of feminist meeting with Mazur-ati last night or what?’ He laughed sleepily. ‘Where are the kids?’

  ‘Still at your mum’s. She’s happy for you to go around and collect them any time up to eleven. I’m only needed here another couple of hours, the old guy says.’

  ‘I’m going to the gym.’

  ‘Nobody goes to the gym on New Year’s Day,’ she repeated back.

  ‘Got a lot of beer to sweat off, bae.’ He rang off.

  Carly growled. He never took anything she did seriously, apart from sex, and not always that. When they’d made love last night, uninhibited and clumsy, she’d glimpsed the man he’d once been, recalled the fearlessness she’d possessed to win him. Lying awake afterwards, her mind made up to come here today, she’d listened to his breathing change as another nightmare started to grip him and guessed he would react like this. He couldn’t see that horses were her peace and freedom, the place she went to escape, an armistice he couldn’t find. He wasn’t mad at her; he just didn’t get it.

  Watching two deer shoot from field hedge to coppice, she yawned. She hadn’t slept much, but she didn’t resent the tiredness. It was the best night she could remember in months. Bridge made for addictive company. They’d finally peeled the talkative Belfast mum off the dance floor at close to two and walked her home, declining offers of yet more wine before the door closed. Both Carly and Ash had looked back as they crossed the lane, sharing the joy of seeing her through the window, dancing around her sitting room, pink-tipped ponytail swinging.

  They’d made love as soon as they got home, house to themselves, not bothering to turn on the lights or draw the curtains, Ash putting music on his phone and telling her to strip. She’d been happy to oblige, trailing shoes and clothes from front door to bedroom, their laughter catching, still tipsy and not at all sleepy, although he’d pulled her down onto him before she’d got into her stride, and it was over too quickly for her to get much pleasure, his back looming in beside her and his breathing deepening to sleep the moment it was over, the old Ash slipping away.

  Lying awake afterwards Carly had recognised how dissatisfied she felt with her life. She had a new friend who shouted and danced and drank and laughed just for the joy of it. Carly loved Bridge’s ‘feck it’ attitude, the way she targeted what she wanted and went for it. She had almost forgotten what it was like to be that sure of herself – the last time she’d felt like that being the first time she’d set eyes on Ash.

  Unable to sleep, she’d taken Bridge’s lead and plotted to seize the day. At five forty-five in the morning, still wide awake, she’d decided there was no time like the present. Two and a half life-changing hours later, it was looking like a very good decision indeed.

  The orgasmic rainbow owes me… She remembered the spell now with a snort of laughter.

  She took a selfie and with Spirit and sent it to the newest number in her phone contacts.

  OMG u superstar!! B xx came Bridge’s sleepily typed reply, followed by: Ps) How can you possibly be awake? Then: I think I’m still drunk. You up for a coffee later?

  She sent a smile and thumbs up. I’ll have kids with me if okay?

  Beezer cos I miss mine. Come round here. Will be trending jaded from 11. :-o :-p

  *

  The nostalgic DAB station Pax’s car stereo was tuned to was pumping out themed hits – ‘Happy New Year’ by Abba, U2 singing ‘New Year’s Day’, ‘New Sensation’ by INXS – all fighting to be heard over the howling exhaust.

  At least the noise drowned out her heaving stomach and throbbing, jackhammer headache. It was also good at covering quiet bleats of fear.

  ‘Steady!’ She battled to stay calm as Luca sliced across three lanes of traffic to exit the M42 onto the M40, hands lifting to cover her face.

  Unaccustomed to driving on the left for many years, Luca’s ‘just getting my eye in’ had a terrifying blind spot. Horns trailed away behind them.

  ‘Sorry about that,’ he said tightly, wincing at the rear-view mirror before accelerating off the slip road, narrowly avoiding a juggernaut. ‘Now where’d that big bugger come from?’ With his thick beard and long hair, it was like being driven by a recently released hostage. One who had never learned to drive.

  Pax kept her fingers across her mouth, voice muffled. ‘Can we stop for that breakfast before I throw up?’ She wasn’t remotely hungry, but the puppy was whimpering, and she longed for solid ground and intravenous caffeine. Plus, her phone was in her bag on the back seat and she needed to charge it, if only to leave a final message for loved ones.

  Kes, Kes, Kes. Guilty conscience at its worse in the mornings, and worse still after last night, she wanted to wail, ‘What have I DONE?’ but she was with the stranger she’d been sick on – quite possibly her mother’s toy boy – and listening to The Carpenters singing ‘We’ve Only Just Begun’, so she pointed at the blue sign for the next exit with its reassuring crossed knife and fork, trying not to cry. Even happy songs made her sad.

  The services were local ones, not motorway, a labyrinth of roads twisting them around the edge of an industrial park to a retail mecca offering a reassuringly homogenous blend of forecourt and food court, a thin Bank Holiday crowd of hungover travellers stopping for breakfast.

  Luca clipped the lead on the puppy. ‘I’ve a call to make. I’ll stretch this little guy’s legs while I’m about it.’

  ‘He hasn’t had all his injections yet,’ she warned, still scrabbling to plug her own phone into the car charger.

  ‘What’s he called?’ He tossed the car keys onto the seat beside her.

  ‘He’s not.’

  �
��Not’s a lousy name.’ With a flash of that startling smile, he strode away.

  He uses it like a weapon to keep people at a distance, Pax decided as she went in search of coffee. They weren’t so different. She’d used ‘Keep Calm and Carry On’ as her shield long before the retro poster campaign.

  Luca and the puppy were still missing when she returned with a bag weighed down with Coke cans and dog-food pouches, plastic handles digging into her arm, and a hot coffee cup in each hand, what Mack called an ‘Irish handshake’ when carrying pints in the pub. Her husband had a mildly offensive cliché for every nationality and occasion.

  Mack. Like a metronome tick in her head. Mack, Mack, Mack. Kes, Kes, Kes.

  Shivering by the bonnet, she drank her own coffee, then Luca’s, wondering where the hell he’d taken her dog and if he was still on the phone. It was a seriously long call if so. Weren’t they all still in bed in Canada? She knew nothing about the set-up he’d left behind. She must be friendly, find out facts, play detective. Alice would be mad at her for letting the opportunity slip.

  At last he reappeared, phone still pressed to his ear, puppy straining to rejoin her, dark eyes gleaming and tail whipping. Handing over the lead, Luca rolled his eyes, mouthing ‘Sorry’ and then resumed talking quickly into the handset.

  She fed the puppy on a disposable plate she’d nabbed from a fast-food outlet, trying not to listen in. It took her a moment to realise that he was speaking Italian, his voice rising and falling far more expressively than it did in his softly spoken mother tongue. As soon as he hung up, he started thumbing a message. She eyed the screen. Was that German?

  The puppy didn’t like his food, sitting down by the plate and looking up at her apologetically.

  Luca was back on the phone, speaking French now, which he did badly, with a marked Irish accent. They all stood by the bonnet for a while, Pax waiting for him to open the car, but as soon as the call ended, he was back to scrolling and messaging.

  ‘It’s cold out here,’ she said pointedly.

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘Best get going.’

  ‘Agreed. Just got one more quick call to make.’

  She could feel her teeth starting to chatter. ‘At least unlock the bloody car.’

  ‘You have the keys,’ he pointed out.

  Feeling stupid, she felt in her pockets, then looked in the plastic bag, then in through the car windows. Finally, retracing her steps, she found she’d left them on the coffee-shop counter. Crazily jittery and raw, just the smallest of goofs made her want to tantrum.

  At least coming back in meant she could slope to the loo. Her reflection looked ghastly. She put on some lipstick and it looked worse, matching her red-rimmed eyes.

  Had Mack got as drunk as her last night? He’d sounded so. Had he kissed a stranger? If only she felt something. She was so much more jealous of his hold over Kes. That was white heat, white noise jealousy.

  Kes. Mack. Kes. Mack.

  Back at the car, Luca was conducting a short-tempered call in English – a thick Irish brogue version – turning away as she approached. ‘Look, I gotta go. Just tell her to take off the stuff about where I’m working from the social streams, yeah? No, I’m not in trouble, but y’know I don’t do all that shit. Thanks.’

  He took one look at Pax’s pinched, wild-eyed face and insisted on driving again. Her phone came to life as soon as the engine started, a cannon fire of messages queued up, all from Mack. Pax only needed to read a few before confirming that, yes, he’d remained very drunk last night.

  The phone rang in her hand as she read through the bitter, misspelled venom written in the early hours. Mack’s avatar was on the incoming call notification, a photograph she’d taken of him with Kes on his shoulders on holiday, both with matching big smiles. She sent the call straight through to voicemail, anger pinching and punching in her throat, angrier still as tears started to slide. How wrong to feel so sorry for him as well as so livid.

  Not wanting Luca to see she was crying, she glared out of the side window, trying to blink her salty betrayal onto submission, but they came ever fiercer, soon joined by streaming nostrils and giveaway snorts.

  Saying nothing, Luca reached for the glovebox, groping for tissues. The car drifted left, tyres roaring across the white hard-shoulder markings.

  ‘There’s nothing in there,’ she sobbed, clutching hold of the dash as the car swerved back into lane again. ‘Please don’t worry. I can sniff.’

  The ringtone blasting through the speakers made her jump. Her phone had automatically paired with the Noddy car’s Bluetooth. Mack again. She turned it off. Feeling she had to explain, she muttered, ‘My husband. It’s a bit messy. We’re separating.’

  ‘I’m sorry to hear that.’

  ‘It’s for the best.’ She sniffed and snorted noisily, desperate to deflect, to grapple a comfort blanket of calmness back. ‘Tell me about you?’

  ‘What do you want to know?’

  ‘Are you and my mother lovers?’

  He almost drove off the road, the defensive smile quick to flash up. ‘I’ve not seen her in years. I’m a horseman. That’s what I do.’

  *

  Bridge had woken three times already this year, the first at seven o’clock her time, midnight in Los Angeles, Bernie sharing the New Year with her sister on phone screens, one surrounded by beautiful party animals, the other with bloodshot eyes and bed hair. Dozing afterwards, podium dancing with a hunk on a Hollywood sign O, she’d been hooked out of the dream by a message from Carly, a welcoming glow of new friendship. Get-together agreed, she’d drifted off to rejoin the hunk and ride together through the plains. A call from Poland had jerked her awake again, companion galloping off as, gravel-voiced, Aleš complained about his headache before a poor signal cut them off. Waiting for him to call back, Bridge had slipped off to sleep again and into a dream of such erotic splendour that when she awoke an hour later, it felt as though she’d been pleasured all night, wide smile buried in her pillow. She rolled over, body shivering with fuzzy pleasure, reluctant to give up the sensation from the lips that had been on hers and between her legs.

  Bridge stretched out in bed, still heavy-headed with a hangover she wore with pride, star-fishing luxuriously as she looked at the time on the bedside clock. Past nine already. She could bring breakfast upstairs, listen to rubbish pop, indulge in a bath. But first she’d close her eyes for another ten minutes. She missed her children and Aleš like vital organs, but there was no denying the lie-ins were bliss. And she had to replay those lips…

  One eye opened again, the other scrunched closed. Hang on. If lips had been simultaneously on her mouth and erogenous zone, that meant more than one set. Had she been dreaming of group sex? Go, Missus! You might be a married mother of two, but your subconscious can rock some fantasy action.

  It was coming back to her now. She’d been on a bench press in a gym, hunk-man approaching to help her lift a heavy weight. She remembered the shape of him, that V from narrow hips to wide shoulders, Lycra shorts full of priapic bulge. Not like her Aleš in football strip with his bearded bulk and buzz cut. Her fantasy figure was clean-shaven, thick-haired, oak-broad and sinewy. He’d started undressing her, telling her she was beautiful. That had been particularly lovely. Aleš had to be coaxed into it these days, sometimes not taking the hint. This man had run his hands up her legs, her miraculously smooth and lean thighs, to bury his fingers in her welcoming wetness, his eyes not leaving hers.

  Wolf eyes. All Turners had wolf-pale eyes.

  ‘Oh feck.’ She remembered his face and felt a flash of mortified shame. Ash Turner. She’d been dreaming about Ash Turner straight after inviting his wife and children to visit. She sat up quickly, pulling on her dressing gown and shoving her feet in her slippers. She didn’t even want to think about who the other lips had belonged to.

  Good hostess that she was, she’d bake some jeźyki biscuits like her Polish sister-in-law had taught her; that would sweeten the bitter aftertaste. First, sh
e needed a cold shower.

  *

  ‘Are all your family in Ireland involved with horses?’

  ‘Pretty much so.’

  Luca heard the hiss of a can pull.

  Not long into Pax’s interrogation about his relationship with her mother, his former employers, the horses he trained and anything else she could fish for, she’d started to gulp diet cola. Getting blood out of a stone was plainly thirsty work. Now on her fourth can, voice ever more painfully husky, she’d moved on to his roots. ‘What fields?’

  ‘Same sort of fields as over here,’ he said lightly. ‘Greener, maybe.’

  She didn’t catch the joke. ‘It’s showjumping, isn’t it?’

  ‘Pretty much.’

  Being grilled made him guard his truths – easier to smile and avoid detail.

  ‘Hunting and dealing as well?’

  ‘That too.’

  ‘So you grew up in the saddle?’

  ‘You too, I imagine.’

  ‘Yep. No choice.’

  ‘Still ride much?’

  ‘Nope.’ Her fingers were drumming the door trim, her knees jumping, disliking the role reversal. She jangled with nerves, like a racehorse in the stalls. Yet she had a steely calmness, that brittle Englishness which would not crack however many fissures ran through the walls. It was exhausting to share space with her. He almost preferred her drunk.

  She gnawed at a thumbnail. ‘Where do you go after this job finishes?’

  ‘Let me unpack first!’ he said, laughing easily.

  The car was making terrible noises now they’d come off the M40. Looking in the wing mirror as they roared along the Stratford Road, Luca saw sparks and, slamming on the brakes, managed to bring the car to a halt in a pitted field entrance.

  The rusted exhaust, full of holes, had dropped from its clips and been dragging along on the tarmac.

  ‘I should have got that fixed,’ Pax muttered when they got out to look at it.

  ‘Telling me.’

  Reaching underneath to assess the damage, he burned his hand, winced and tucked it under his armpit, tilting his head to look again. ‘Sure, that’s a sieve under there. I can maybe patch it up to get us home if you’ve some wire.’