The Country Lovers

by Walker, Fiona

  ‘Sure we will,’ he said smoothly.

  What friend? Pax wanted to ask but held it in check because her mother would only offer a vague ‘you don’t know them’ and they both disliked lying. The conceit they constructed around Blair was laughable, and yet somehow necessary.

  The Blair affair made Pax uncomfortable, aware she was complicit and her siblings disapproved as much as Lester did, but there was no denying the mood at the stud had lifted. Ronnie was recharged, the inner glow so bright she was like a moving brazier, irresistibly warming. Awkwardly, it had also put Ronnie in Cupid overdrive. As subtle as Mrs Bennet, she’d spent all week making her excuses to ‘leave you two to get on with it’ the moment Pax and Luca were within ten metres’ radius of one another, Kes or no Kes. Luca tolerated it far more genially that Pax who had to bite her tongue hard, as now, to maintain her customary cool.

  ‘There’ll be lots of opportunities coming up for you gorgeous creatures to have the run of the place without me getting in the way,’ she announced, running through a series of upcoming nights away that undoubtedly coincided with Blair’s work diary. ‘I’ll be absent quite a few weekends when Kes is with his father, so I’m relying on you to make sure Pax doesn’t mope, Luca.’

  ‘I’m too busy working to mope.’ Pax found Luca catching her eye, holding it.

  ‘On which, I’m not going to argue about the cost again, Pax; I’m getting in that girl, Carly whatnot at weekends. I’ve already called her to say so. You and Luca both deserve a Sunday lie-in.’

  Pax let the doubling-up of the lie-ins pass, aware of Luca’s steel toe laying into a cobble. Tired arms joggling Kes as her mother started briefing them on all the things they must make sure to do tonight while she was gone, Pax guessed Luca must be troubled by Blair. He obviously had a pretty big thing about Ronnie. But his reaction was typically to smile it all quietly away.

  ‘We’ve it all covered, Ron. You’ll be back tomorrow, yes?’ he checked, his eyes back on Beck as he tossed his head and stamped to try to get the Shetland’s attention.

  ‘Of course! And I haven’t forgotten I’m babysitting for you two.’ Ronnie made it sound like they were co-parents going on a date night.

  ‘It’s not important,’ Pax dismissed quickly, dreading the AA meeting.

  ‘It is important,’ he said but didn’t look at her.

  ‘We’re looking forward to our cowboy sleepover, aren’t we, Kes?’ Ronnie insisted, lifting Kes back across into her arms to swing him around.

  ‘Yeeeeeeeeehaaaaa!’ Kes squealed delightedly.

  Still at the gate, Luca’s focus was entirely on Beck, the horse’s body language laden with warning signals as his forelegs slammed down, pawing at the ground, ears flattened to his head, aggression uncoiling at the little interloper like a flamethrower.

  ‘We need to get them out of there!’ Pax reached for the gate latch without thinking.

  He put out a hand to stop her. ‘Let’s find out if this is going to work or not.’

  ‘You said it was too soon.’

  ‘Maybe I was wrong.’ The green gaze remained fixed on the field where Beck was snaking his neck and baring his teeth. ‘Look.’

  It was little Coll who had the stallion cornered, planting two small hind hooves squarely in his big white chest with a furious karate cry squeal. Beck looked confounded. Ears flattened, he went to attack. Coll double-barrelled him again without hesitation. This time, the stallion dropped his head sheepishly, feigning an elaborate need to scratch his nose on his knee. They were soon mooching around side by side, tugging at grass tufts.

  Pax whistled, looking across at Luca. ‘That’s it?’

  ‘Sometimes there’s no such thing as too soon.’

  When he returned her gaze, for once unsmiling, Pax felt a sharp jolt and turned away, bursting with a strange, unfamiliar shame as real as pain. She’d been fighting it all week. It disoriented her. Was it pity? Empathy? Please let it not be desire.

  Ambling back to the gate, looking very pleased with himself, the Shetland thrust his nose through the bars in the hope of a carrot. Behind him, Beck hung back chivalrously, still pretending to snatch at the grass.

  ‘There’ll be no more trouble between them.’ Luca turned to Ronnie as she brought Kes back to pat his clever pony, smile billboard wide.

  ‘If only it was so simple with humans!’

  ‘Maybe it is.’ Luca caught Pax’s eye again, and again she felt a stitch catch beneath her ribs.

  ‘I love Coll!’ Kes shrieked, clambering up the gate rails to pat and hug him. ‘He’s the best ever pony. And I love you, Gronny. You are the best person in the world ever, ever, ever.’

  Avoiding everyone’s gaze, especially small self-satisfied Coll’s, Pax told herself she must be grateful that a pony’s fierce lust for life was cheering her son up, however tightly her teeth were gritted at such obvious emotional bribery.

  A loud shrieking made her turn. It was coming from Lester’s cottage.

  ‘Is that the phone?’ asked Ronnie hopefully.

  ‘Oh hell!’ Pax recognised the sound. ‘Smoke alarm.’ She sprinted back to find the scones she’d forgotten about were charred to black lava. The baking tray burnt her fingers through the thin tea towel as she pulled it out of the oven, dropping it on the quarry tiles, eyes smarting. ‘Ouch!’

  The frustration and jealousy she felt around her mother and Kes hijacked her as she let out a sob, dropping to her haunches and wrapping her head in her arms.

  ‘Everything all right?’ Luca appeared through the black fumes with an old CO2 extinguisher, just a yellow helmet and a hose short of heroic. ‘Your mother thought you might need this?’

  ‘Fine!’ Pax sprang back up and flapped the towel at the screeching alarm. ‘I’ve never been able to bake.’

  ‘When you’re perfect in every other way, who needs cake?’

  She rolled her eyes. ‘Flatter me, why don’t you?’

  ‘Why not?’

  ‘Because you’re being creepy.’

  ‘Creepy?’ he laughed.

  It was the wrong word, but it was out there before she could think of a better one. Trying to cheer her up seemed to be one of his new missions but if he wanted to make her feel good about herself, he kept laying it on too thick. ‘Creepy’ sounded like she was accusing him of being a perv, not overdoing the mood-lifting.

  Once the alarm had been quietened, he studied the black remains. ‘You’re right, you’re shit at baking.’

  She laughed, relieved. ‘Creep.’

  ‘Cake wrecker.’

  Illogically, Pax now had an urge to salvage her reputation by pointing out that she could throw together an asparagus soufflé and rack of lamb in her sleep, just not bake. Knowing such boasts would hardly impress a vegan, she kept quiet.

  On the way out, he fixed on one of the photographs on Lester’s wall. ‘This is you, isn’t it?’

  It was herself at three or four on a fat Dartmoor pony.

  ‘She was called Mouse and pure evil. She once bit my brother so hard he fainted. And I know what you’re doing, by the way.’

  ‘Good. My first pony was called Banjax, a little Vanner stallion who teased the mares. Da wouldn’t let me have a saddle until I could jump him over every field wall on our farm bareback. Look at you, all prim and pretty. Is that your auld fella holding the lead rein? Good-looking man.’

  ‘That’s Lester!’ she laughed, remembering her grandmother saying he’d once been a village heartthrob.

  Pax pointed to the noble figure of her father on a hunter surrounded by hounds in a neighbouring frame. ‘That’s Daddy.’

  ‘He looks kind.’ He sounded surprised.

  ‘He was, especially to his horses. He far preferred them to people.’

  ‘I’ve met enough who do in our business.’ His eyes trailed the other pictures. ‘This him too?’

  ‘Yes, with Grumps and Granny at Eyngate Hall. The hunt always meets there on New Year’s Day. That’s Alice in a basket saddle with Mum
my leading. Tim was only a baby. She’s pregnant with me, can you see? It must have been the year Daddy rode the Wolf Moon Lap.’

  ‘What is this Wolf Moon Lap?’

  She told him about her eccentric great-grandfather’s annual challenge. ‘After he died, so much of the stud’s land had to be sold to cover inheritance tax and other debts that the Wolf Moon Lap became little more than a ten-furlong circuit you could get round in less time than it took to play a pop song, so Grumps redrew it to include a loop around Compton windmill, making it the same length Frank would have galloped. He never made it back before Saturn kicked in. He used to say if any Compton horse did, it would make our fortune.’

  ‘What a fantastic challenge!’

  His enthusiasm took her by surprise. ‘I told Lester we should add it to your job description.’

  ‘Sure, I’d have a go, wouldn’t you?’ His eyebrows shot up beneath the blond curls.

  Amused, Pax looked away, taken by surprise by sharp tug of conscience. I would give every star in the sky to see it.

  ‘Sure, horses are in your blood. It’s why your boy loves that wee pony out there,’ said Luca.

  ‘Here we go.’ Pax gave him a wise look. ‘Kes has to live in a real world. I was far too cossetted.’ She eyed the little figure in the photograph with her toes and nose up, wanting to warn her to break free sooner. ‘Up to the age of ten or eleven, I thought everybody had ponies. Look at me here…’ She moved across a few squares and tapped herself at fifteen flying across country, red ponytail like sea-spray, face of the Virgin Mary. ‘I was like one of those characters from vintage pony books, brought up here with hunting-mad grandparents, educated in living museums as far from civilisation as school fees could buy, riding every free moment. It might as well have been the fifties. Immersive doesn’t begin to describe it.’

  ‘No wonder Bay took advantage of you.’

  ‘He didn’t,’ she said quickly. ‘I was still wrestling with my conscience whether to let him near my bra clasp when he slept with Mummy.’

  ‘I wish I’d known you then.’ His eyes glittered as he studied the photograph.

  ‘I was only interested in horses.’

  ‘So was I.’

  Eager to stop talking about herself, she headed towards the door again. ‘Would you have galloped up the drive on your Vanner cob to overthrow the status quo?’

  ‘I’m not much of an overthrower.’

  ‘More underhand then?’ Looking out through the upper-door panes she could just make out Kes and her mother still hanging over the gate to the stallion paddock, nose to nose.

  ‘Call it a quiet rebellion. We’ll get you back on a horse.’

  ‘Don’t be so sure.’ When she turned back, his smile was in its usual spot.

  ‘Ronnie thinks you’ve lost your nerve.’

  ‘She can think what she likes.’ Zipping up her coat, Pax held the door open.

  ‘You’re so funny when you talk about her; your eyes pop.’

  ‘They do not.’

  ‘Do.’

  She rolled her eyes.

  ‘There you go.’

  ‘Right.’ She waved him out.

  In Lester’s walled cottage garden, Luca stopped to admire the view across to the stallion paddock. ‘Your mother wants your happiness more than anything, you know that.’

  Pax sucked her teeth. ‘She’ll leave again. It’s what she does. Runs away into the sunset.’

  ‘Not from this place; she’s always wanted to come back here.’

  ‘C’mon, Luca, she’s been eyeing the door since the day she arrived. As soon as the stud is heading in the right direction, she’ll leave. That’s why she likes me being here.’

  ‘You don’t want to take it on?’

  ‘I can barely see past my nose right now.’

  ‘It’s a beautiful nose.’

  ‘You’re being creepy again.’ Realising how close he was standing, her pulses bolted. Her nose suddenly felt Pinocchio enormous, her lies laid bare.

  ‘I’m being honest.’ He sighed, stepping back, hands held up.

  ‘Did Mummy put you up to this?’

  ‘Will you quit being so paranoid?’

  ‘If you quit flirting.’

  ‘I’m so not flirting! You’re right, you were seriously cossetted if you think this is flirting. I can flirt. This is not it.’

  ‘But you do know my mother is trying to make us do just that?’

  ‘Of course I do.’

  ‘I wish she’d lay off. It’s just not fair on Kes.’ Pax looked across at the little figure by the gate, her heart thumping like a marching army. ‘Mummy doesn’t understand how much he needs balance and consistency, a sense of normality, not ponies and hero figures. He thinks you’re his new best friend.’

  ‘I think he’s mine. He reminds me of my nephews.’

  Pax rolled her eyes. Yet it occurred to her that Kes hadn’t mentioned Oliver in days.

  ‘Let him make believe he’s a cowboy with that hoofed furball as his sidekick for a little bit, hey?’ Luca said kindly. ‘He’s five; he’s a boy; it’s normal. This place is a very big part of his world.’

  ‘My father used to call it a walled fortress of horse and hound.’ Pax let her gaze trail up along the yard’s golden stone sides again. She never failed to be thrown by its scale, by its emptiness without its familiar cornerstones: her grandparents gone, Lester sidelined. Her father’s tenure might have been the briefest, but his shadow fell longest of them all.

  Luca was still looking across the fields from which they could hear much chatter, giggling and bossy pony squeals. ‘We need to separate those two before they grow so attached they make trouble.’

  ‘It’s far too late for that,’ she sighed. ‘Mummy’s convinced Kes that he’ll be the first rider to compete in all three equestrian disciplines at the Olympics with wife and teammate Princess Charlotte at his side.’ She unlatched the door through the wall to the yard and held it open for him.

  ‘I was talking about Beck and the pony.’ He ducked through it, adding, ‘I love it that you’re funny. It’s sexy.’

  Flustered, Pax found herself noticing his backside for the first time. It was a seriously well-made backside. She looked determinedly away and marched through after him. Forgetting to duck for the stone lintel, she clouted herself hard on the forehead, reeling sideways and tripping over a boot scraper before falling against Laurence the fox’s cage. ‘Ooofuck!’

  A split second later, Luca had her shoulders gripped in his hands. ‘Pax? You okay?’

  For a moment, his hand was on her cheek, like a lover’s. She couldn’t stop looking at his mouth. Why was she looking at his mouth?

  ‘You okay?’

  She looked up. His pupils were huge. Surely hers were the ones that should be dilated after a knock on the head? Then again, they probably were.

  He was the one looking at her mouth now. ‘Pax, you know I think you’re the most—’

  ‘I’m fine,’ she said carefully. ‘Stop being creepy.’

  Laurence backed her up from the cage behind her, snapping his jaws and making huffing and snarling noises as he paced from side to side, glaring at Luca through the wire, his spine arched up.

  Pax let Luca help her up, noticing how quick he was to step away afterwards and hold open the door in the wall, her three-figure heartbeat in her throat as they walked back to the field in silence.

  *

  Having been unable to persuade Flavia and Zak to settle for their overdue afternoon naps, Bridge battled to finish Aleš’s VAT return amid sticky fingers, tearful tumbles and screaming bumps. The figures were still way out, HMRC’s online submission page warning her that it didn’t add up. Sod it, she’d balance it with a few made-up additions. This time it uploaded and she hurried upstairs to repaint her face with fifties eyeliner slicks and a bright pout.

  She overdid it, rushing because she needed to get Flavia and Zak ready to go out too, one currently applying glittery green eyeshadow at her side, the othe
r coasting around the bed with a heavy nappy drooping to his creased, pudgy knees.

  Tired and fractious from playing with their cousins, Flavia and Zak didn’t want to go out again, mewling as she changed them from the jogger combos to corduroy and fleece newly bought from the overpriced boutique in Chipping Hampton, ashamed that she’d shopped especially: Bridge, the rebel, dressing her children in Hackett and Joules in her quest to have friends as rah as Petra’s.

  She checked WhatsApp again and stared in shock at a message from Petra featuring a photograph of her evil Shetland pony looking like mini-me alongside the stud’s big white stallion. It was captioned: Ronnie has stolen my man! Let the bromance begin…

  Competitive streak stoked, Bridge tapped: Hee! Cute! I’ll say hello when I’m having tea there with Pax this afternoon. *Mummy playdate alert*

  Furious with herself – the asterisks were stooping low – she heard a wail and turned in time to see Flavia upend an entire pot of bronzing powder over her brother’s head.

  Her phone buzzed again, a private message from Mo, another from Petra.

  You okay, love? asked one; the other just said Chin up.

  They might not always see past the painted face, but the Bags were straight onto humblebragging.

  *

  Kes was so besotted with Coll that when they brought the pony and his big scaredy-cat friend in from the field, he didn’t want to leave the Shetland’s side, glued to Ronnie and Luca too, firing questions about horses. Distractedly hurrying back and forth to Lester’s cottage, trying to bake something for her visitors without burning it, Pax didn’t realise at first that Ronnie had disappeared to make one of her long calls, leaving the Irishman to play babysitter as well as run the yard.

  ‘Sorry!’ she said every time she reclaimed Kes, only to find he’d sloped back a few minutes later.

  ‘Sure, it’s no bother.’

  ‘I’m Loo Car’s assistant manager!’ Kes announced, making Luca laugh.

  Pax had noticed the easy way the duo rubbed along from day one, another strand to her complex jealousy. Knock-knock jokes had flown back and forth between them in the past week, along with silly voices and at one point she was certain she’d heard Luca singing. They brought out good qualities in each other; Kes was less physically aggressive and more focussed around Luca, and, like the sun coming out after days of dark skies, Pax had seen far more of O’Brien the jester, Luca’s reserve drawn out by Kes’s determined thirst for knowledge and laughter.