The Country Lovers

by Walker, Fiona

  ‘She burned it, didn’t she?’

  He rubbed his mouth, stopping the nervous smile, that all-consuming twitch that charmed all comers. ‘After she did it, she let me go without another word. When an Irishman says enough, he means enough.’ Raking his hair with his fingers, rings glittering, he looked away. ‘So I flew here, drinking all the while. First person I met was a fellow lush who threw up all over me, told me I wasn’t wanted and shouted a lot. Suicidal secret habit she’s got going on there. If helping her stop takes boring her with a load of old heartache I’ve never told another soul, so be it.’ He turned to her, offering his hand. ‘My name is Luca and I have an alcohol problem.’

  She shook it, surprised it felt so warm. Hers was freezing. ‘I’m Patricia and I owe you an apology. You totally get the plum gin vibe. I’m sorry I misjudged you.’

  Thinking back to washing up Christmas lunch a fortnight earlier, she realised it made no difference if it was Taylor slinging Martinis at Burton in Beverly Hills or a despairing Cotswold wife waving a Dishmatic at her husband – drinking made break-ups toxic.

  ‘And I’m sorry I was so awful when you arrived.’ She held his gaze.

  ‘It pulled my head out of my arse.’

  ‘The first reaction I always aim for.’

  His mouth twisted a smile away and he dipped his head. ‘Will you let me help you now?’ When he looked up, it didn’t feel like criticism any more, but friendship.

  She nodded, watching as he reached into his coat and drew out a tightly folded piece of paper. ‘They meet every Thursday.’

  She pocketed it without looking. ‘Thanks.’

  ‘You know, talking about it helped me too.’

  She nodded. ‘You need to get her out of your system as well as the alcohol.’

  ‘When you asked if I still love her, the honest answer is no. It got way too poisonous and it turned us into bad people, all the goodness rotted out. But falling out of love with somebody feels like such a sin, especially if you know you share a child. You look around for someone else to take the fall with you, don’t you?’

  Pax thought about her mother to whom Luca had been drawn for her carpe diem optimism. ‘A lover?’

  ‘Or a drinking buddy.’

  ‘Or a priest to take confession.’

  ‘I stopped doing all that years ago. I sit in cars with complicated women instead.’

  ‘This isn’t your first time?’ She feigned innocent shock.

  Half smiling, he looked away and they fell silent as they sat side by side in the confined space, staring out of the windscreen. Not lovers or drinking buddies. Something far more intimate. The car suddenly felt very small again.

  ‘Am I supposed to give out Hail Marys and Our Fathers now?’

  ‘Just directions.’

  She jumped as the engine started.

  ‘It’s nearly three. We’d better pick your lad up.’

  14

  Ronnie was baffled to find the stud deserted like the Marie Celeste, no response to her shouts as she marched round under the watchful eye of maternal mares and surprisingly companionable-looking stallions. The yards were immaculate but unmanned.

  She started emptying the car boot, crammed full of credit card-bought groceries to indulge her grandson, tempt her daughter to eat, and explore the wonderful world of soya protein for Luca. Determined to pull family and team together, she sensed the place to start was around the kitchen table in the shadow of her mother. Picking out a Kinder egg, she thought ruefully of her plan to enlist her grandson’s help to unpack the shopping – ‘There’s something for you in one of these bags!’ – while Pax and Luca, talking horse, nursed steaming mugs of tea, bonding over the big box of biscuits she now rammed on a larder shelf. If an army marched on its stomach, it needed to stick around the mess long enough to eat.

  Where are you? she texted Luca, then huffed as the No Service warning flashed up on her phone.

  Had they argued again?

  She went back outside to try to find some signal.

  The sight of her horsebox compounded her disappointment. How could she miss Blair’s visit? So typical of him to blow in and out like a storm. The lorry cab, which had been left open with the keys in the ignition, still smelled of him. Climbing in, she curled her feet up onto the seat beneath her, dogs settling alongside as she looked out from her high vantage point across the raised paddocks to the village and vale, never failing to love the view, yet wishing she shared it more often with company that had two legs rather than four. Preferably two familiar, rock-hard hairy ones with high tech metal plates holding one femur and one ankle bone together and a small, faded tattoo of a wallaby on the left buttock dating back to 1986.

  Whose court was the ball in? The divorce court if they risked it again, she feared.

  A year ago, she and Blair had been together at competitions as owner and rider, discreet dinner party guests amongst Wiltshire allies and utterly zip-mouthed beyond it, love a manageable balancing act in which Verity’s dignity and well-being were always first priority.

  By the time Ronnie inherited the stud in trust, their affair had become an open a secret in eventing circles, and Verity’s family were increasingly gunning for Blair. Ronnie’s profile was suddenly so high, the affair felt too risky.

  Then there was his jealousy, which was tiresome.

  The yard phone started ringing. She hurried back in to grab the kitchen receiver.

  ‘Compton Magna Stud,’ she shouted through a hailstorm of interference, the line terrible.

  ‘I wish to speak with Luca O’Brien.’ It was one of the politely exotic, silken-voiced calls Lester got so excited about.

  Talking into the snow of crackles, Ronnie explained that he was unavailable, silently adding possibly abducted by aliens. ‘Can I take a message?’

  ‘Please confirm his current cellphone number?’

  Ronnie had no intention of giving it out without credentials; besides which, she’d left her phone in the lorry. ‘May I ask your name?’

  The answer was swift, incomprehensibly Arabic, and almost definitely prefaced with the word Prince. ‘And with who am I speaking?’

  ‘Veronica Ledwell. Call me Ronnie.’ She adopted her honeyed, husky sales voice.

  ‘One moment, please.’

  Just an ordinary prince, she remembered Luca saying. There are seven thousand out there.

  Ronnie waited, picking up the pile of post she’d collected from the box at the end of the drive and flicking through the envelopes. Bills, bills and more bills. She cast them aside unopened, receiver crackling in her ear.

  ‘Hello?’ What was she supposed to call him, she wondered: highness, majesty? ‘Still there?’

  ‘I am Googling you. Please be patient.’

  The cheek! He’d have no luck with her. ‘Our website is under development I’m afraid.’

  ‘There is adequate information here. You breed horses, Mrs Ledwell. I buy horses.’

  ‘What serendipity.’ She glanced at the bills. ‘You must visit.’

  ‘Indeed, but I wish to speak with Luca first.’

  Ronnie felt a frisson of expectation as Luca grew in stature, his enigmatic absence less vexing.

  ‘I’ll get just his number. Wait there.’ She went back out to fetch her phone and look it up. This time, clambering into the lorry cab, she spotted that Blair had left a bulky envelope propped up against the dash, defiantly old school, the Ron in his scratchy handwriting making her reach out to pick it up so that she could trace the letters, hearing his deep growl of a voice. Inside was a CD, Bowie’s Station to Station, a rare boxed set. She turned it over and saw that he’d circled ‘Golden Years’, which made her smile. More scratchy writing beside it. Open the box. Inside was a golden chain with a delicate leaf pendant on it. Looking closer, Ronnie realised it was an olive branch, some of the leaves picked out in diamonds.

  ‘Now that’s made this a whole lot harder,’ she told her dogs, switching on the engine and slotting in the CD, skippin
g to the second track and then settling back to text thank you.

  When a short and deliciously flirty exchange was cut short by her signal dropping out, she listened to ‘Word on a Wing’, feet up on the dash, vaguely recalling that Bowie claimed not to remember making the album at all. How she’d adored the Thin White Duke. A teenager at the time, she’d dreamed of marrying her own nobleman, naughty Bunter Worcester maybe or even Prince Charles.

  Just an ordinary prince.

  ‘Shit!’ She scrabbled out of the cab and ran back to the house to snatch up the phone from the kitchen table. He must surely have rung off. To cheer herself up, she said ‘Your Highness?’ in her best creepy courtier voice.

  She almost dropped the receiver when he replied smoothly, ‘I am still here.’

  ‘Goodness, I’m so sorry. Bit of an emergency. Loose… er… horse.’ Morals.

  ‘I am a patient man.’

  ‘Here you go.’ She read Luca’s number out, adding, ‘I really am most—’

  But the patient prince had already rung off, leaving Ronnie listening to nothing but crackle.

  *

  Luca drove in near silence along a maze of country lanes edged with stone walls, hedges and woods, Pax’s voice low and monotone as she gave directions.

  He wished he felt better about what he’d just told her. He’d not said that much in one heartfelt conversation in years, possibly ever. It had felt awkwardly one-sided. And he’d cheated by leaving a big chunk of the story out.

  Pax was much tougher and more insightful than he’d appreciated, the tears and fragility hiding formidable, rebellious resolve. And she kept pulling out surprises, not all of them welcome.

  She reached into the back seat as they dropped down a hill to a pretty, sprawling village, pulling out a sparkly pink woolly hat with an oversized fluffy bobble on top. ‘I need you to wear this.’

  ‘You’re kidding me, right?’

  ‘Mack’s convinced I’m having an affair. If he thinks I’ve brought lover boy with me to pick up our son, he’ll go ape. This way, if one of them spots you sitting in the car, you’ll look like a girlfriend.’

  ‘Get away! I’ll look like a pervert.’

  ‘Please, Luca. It’s just a hat.’

  Pulling over by a Neighbourhood Watch sign, he put it on. ‘Satisfied?’

  ‘The beard’s a bit Conchita Wurst. You’ll need to keep your head turned away.’ He felt her nervous energy building, the anxiety associated with seeing her husband.

  He caught his reflection in the rear-view mirror and blew himself a kiss. ‘Sexy.’ He looked ridiculous.

  ‘Actually, you do look strangely hot,’ she muttered.

  As they set off again, she flipped down the visor to look in the mirror, only to flip it straight back up with a groan. ‘Oh God, they’ll probably photograph my face as evidence of daytime drinking.’

  ‘You look fine. Now don’t bite your nails. Or blaspheme.’

  ‘Flatterer.’ She looked at him, half smiling, only the whites of her eyes revealing how nervous she was. ‘You must hate watching reality TV. There’s a compulsory ohmygod every ten seconds.’

  ‘I don’t watch television,’ he said truthfully.

  ‘I’m starting to love your weirdness. Especially in that hat.’

  Her dry, throwaway humour took a bit of getting used to, the effusiveness undercut with sarcasm. The word ‘love’ lingered, although it shouldn’t have.

  They were at the far side of the village where ugly bungalows with incongruous names like Little Nooks and La Cabana hid, squat and double-glazed, behind laurel hedges.

  ‘It’s on the left here. That’s Mack’s motorbike, so he’s here.’ He could almost hear her pulses spike straight to three figures. ‘Go past the house a bit. Park up there on the left.’

  Luca stopped the car out of sight from the large, neat white bungalow, the Italian rust bucket tucked against its garden’s freshly trimmed holly hedge. Above them, a To Let sign was holding firm in the wind. Pax had found a hairband in a pocket and was scraping her hair up into it.

  In the rear-view mirror, he could see the yellow of a wasp-waisted sports’ bike snarling alongside a very clean Honda Jazz on a neatly raked gravel drive. ‘That’s some horsepower.’

  ‘Mack’s Christmas present to himself. Probably why he wasn’t interested in a puppy.’

  ‘Don’t tell me – Mack is short for Middle-Aged Crisis?’

  She double-took, a rare laugh breaking cover. ‘A dog’s for life, not mid-life.’ She pulled the door open, cold air snapping in, lifting the petrol receipts in the central caddy so they flew round the car like spells. And as she glanced back over her shoulder, the magic of the car’s closed intimacy, the good humour, seemed to swirl around them and then just as quickly it was sucked outside.

  ‘I have to talk to Mack about schools. I’ll try to be quick.’

  He glanced at the dash clock.

  ‘You need to be back at the stud, I know. It’s crazy you chauffeuring me here like this.’ Slam. Magic over.

  Luca cursed under his breath. Having just bared his soul, he was now sitting in a rusty car like a transvestite getaway driver, and she was still making him feel like an annoying stranger.

  Be kind to her. Ronnie’s voice was again in his head.

  Ronnie hadn’t asked for this, he reminded himself. This was Luca O’Brien doing what he always did, completely over-playing it.

  His phone rang. Expecting a call back from an Italian cousin, desperate for the music of another language, he answered it without looking. ‘Pronto, Matteo.’

  ‘Luca, this is Mishaal.’

  He wouldn’t have recognised the voice. Deeper. Less domineering, more in control.

  ‘Mishaal.’ He drew his jaw up, swallowing slowly. ‘How y’doing?’

  ‘You are in England, my father tells me.’

  ‘That’s right.’

  ‘As am I. We will meet.’

  His manner of speaking hadn’t changed. Far more businesslike than his flamboyant father, Mishaal had always possessed a robotic quality. It made him difficult to read.

  ‘Might be tricky,’ Luca managed to say, his mind back in that stable: Beck facing destruction having fought for his life; the death-row pardon; the curse from the hospital bed, Mishaal quietly awaiting payback time. He couldn’t think fast enough to get out of this.

  ‘There’s a matter of importance I wish to discuss,’ said Mishaal, his monotone steely.

  ‘How long are you here?’ Luca checked the rear-view mirror, jumpy as a getaway driver. He wondered where exactly Mishaal was.

  ‘I fly in one week and do not return until June.’

  ‘Sure, summer’s much better for me.’ Luca would be gone by then, as would Beck; he’d make sure of it. ‘I’ve only just started this job, you see, and it’s full-on.’

  ‘I have spoken with your employer and she has kindly invited me to visit. It is a part of the country I should like to see more of.’

  Luca kicked into the car’s footwell. He’d been naïve imagining Mishaal wouldn’t know precisely where he was.

  ‘We must meet face to face, Luca,’ he was saying. ‘When are you available? Outside work hours, of course. This cannot wait any longer than necessary.’

  Stay cool, Luca reminded himself. He’s a dutiful son making contact because his father ordered him to, the old prince convinced that Mishaal and the Horsemaker should build bridges, that Luca would help him win endurance races. They have no idea Beck is here. Bluff. A week passes very quickly. ‘I don’t have my diary with me.’

  ‘Then let us speak again when you do.’ With a sharp beep, the call was ended. A moment later a vCard was texted through with multiple numbers, emails and even an IBAN code. Maybe he wants to blackmail me? Luca wondered illogically, blood thrumming in his ears. Was there a price for what he’d lost? ‘It is written in the Qur’an and in your Bible: an eye for an eye!’

  He thumped the steering wheel, glaring out at the lane. Pax was right
. It was craziness being parked up here like a cabbie when he should be looking after the horses. He started the engine, for a moment not caring if he drove off and left her here. The radio burst into life: Jess Glynn singing ‘Don’t Be So Hard On Yourself’.

  Knott, who had been asleep on the back seat, scrambled his way over the central console and came to sit in Luca’s lap, licking his chin. Luca stroked him distractedly, listening to the song. Every word of it could be about Pax. Or him. He cut the engine.

  As he did, he could hear a man’s raised voice out of sight behind the car, a familiar soundtrack from the stud in the past week. He’d only ever seen Mack from a distance – not hard to spot his thick-set bulk and the way he used it to put his wife in reverse, Ginger Rogers dancing backwards around the cobbles – but his voice carried like a dictator at a rally.

  Catching movement in his mirrors, he turned to see Pax’s little boy standing by the yellow motorbike, carrying an oversized cuddly rabbit and a toy steam engine. Stocky, round-cheeked and glossily brunette, he took after his father. Yet it was his mother’s haunted, soulful eyes that peered out from beneath the heavy fringe. Out of sight, Mack’s voice shouted and raged, Pax’s urgent attempts to quieten him unheeded.

  Luca watched as the boy set down his toys and picked up a handful of gravel, pushing it into the exhaust of the big bike, followed by another, then a third. The fourth handful was hurled at the shiny yellow paintwork. As he turned for a fifth, he caught sight of Luca watching him and promptly disappeared.

  Luca’s phone rang again. It was Ronnie, the line so bad it sounded as though she was grinding coffee. ‘Where in hell are you? I’ve been shouting my head off on the yard, didn’t you hear?’

  ‘I’ll be there in a minute,’ he promised as the coffee grinder scattered its contents down the line, her response inaudible.

  At last Pax wrenched the back door open, helping Kes into his booster seat, her tone predictably hypnotic with soothing reassurances. ‘Now, have we got everything? You have Rab the rabbit, yes? Right. Remember Luca, Granny’s stud manager? Say hello!’