Country Lovers

by Fiona Walker

  Her freshly edited CV, carefully tweaked for Suzy David, looked exquisite on the page.

  ‘Fuck truffle caviar and gingko nuts.’ She deleted it, cracked her knuckles and typed:

  PLAN A: Get high-flying HR position and flick SD two fingers No openings atm.

  PLAN B: Start own business and flick SD one finger No start-up capital atm.

  PLAN C: Apply for part-time job at school and do not flick fingers.

  ‘Just Heads, Shoulders, Knees and Toes,’ she muttered, about to cross that one out before remembering that during her drunken midnight rethink – now rethought – Ash had said something very sexy about how much she’d liven the place up. Not that she’d let herself imagine livening it up in a very short suit and heels, locking up alone after a parents’ evening, Mr Turner running in late, all sweaty from his gym. Oh no. There were safeguarding considerations to factor in here. Not to mention Carly and the kids.

  ‘Stay in the car,’ she growled.

  Twenty minutes into Googling through situations vacant, Bridge was increasingly depressed by the lack of anything new. Meanwhile, Fantasy Ash was kicking hell out of her boot outside, demanding to come in. It was a lousy time of year to look for work, she reflected, weakening, listening to his army boots pummelling against her spare wheel. No HR department worth their salt would advertise until everyone had their feet back under their desks in January, or in her case, their Uggs under a small plastic table at a soft-play centre.

  Fantasy Ash sprang the car boot.

  She leaned back and stretched luxuriously, allowing herself a quick dreamscape in which he kicked open her front door, dressed in full paramilitary garb, to ‘rescue’ her from domestic servitude. Off came the flak jacket – witness dog tags, tattoos, hard muscles, narrow hips and big boots – off came the khaki vest. Oh, those egg-box abs. Carly hadn’t been wrong.

  Don’t think about Carly.

  ‘Come here, gorgeous,’ growled Fantasy Ash.

  Reaching for her phone, Bridge changed Spotify to Arctic Monkeys’ ‘Do I Wanna Know’, pulled out the popsock bun and shook loose her hair. She closed her eyes and licked her lips. ‘You’ll have to come and get me.’

  There was a sudden blast of cold air and Bridge’s eyes snapped open in shock as she heard the front door crashing open against the upcycled umbrella stand. ‘Kocham Cię na zawsze!’

  Beard, gargantuan shoulders, duffel coat, Christmas jumper.

  Her husband, so huge he had to duck to come in. Biscuits box in one hand, vodka in the other, brows lowered.

  ‘Why d’you park car so badly?’ he roared. Then burst into laughter at Bridge’s shocked face. ‘I brought you your biscuits, kochanie. I told you I was coming, yes? Zdejmij majtki. Take your clothes off.’

  *

  Like any good horseman, Luca studied teeth closely, human as well as equine.

  His own were a part of his language; he smiled a lot, something he’d done unconsciously since his first gummy grin. He smiled more than he spoke. Obama-smiling, his last boss had called it, a surly Canadian showjumper who hadn’t smiled since last standing on the Olympic podium in the nineties. It was a natural pacifier, a communication that was subservient in packs and dominant in herds; you could tell a lot about a human the way they used their teeth. Pax Forsyth bared hers like a wildcat, for all the purring voice; he had yet to see her smile.

  Ronnie’s teeth were small, even and naturally palest vanilla, not the artificial glacial white dentists added. She had a gold crown that glinted when she threw her mouth open to laugh. He looked out for it now as she chattered easily on the whistle-stop tour of Compton Magna Stud, starting by walking the fields while there was a break in the rain, striding along at breakneck speed and making Luca laugh a lot – she seemed intent to do so as often as possible – as she filled him in on local geography and history. Heels warmed by her two little black-and-tan dogs trotting in their wake, Ronnie made no mention of the exchange he’d just witnessed between mother and daughter. Instead, she explained how the stud fitted into the old-school Bardswolds with its long-established families, big hunting fields, eventing-mad landowners and nosy villagers.

  ‘Nothing changes around here when it comes to horses – new money on the flat, old money over jumps, amateurs dabble in whatever’s trending, and if you breed sports horses, you either need a second job or a criminal masterplan. I have neither, but I do have better blood and turf than most.’

  He couldn’t fault the pastureland bouncing underfoot, which even a punishing winter had been unable to muddy more than superficially. Fenced with fine old park railing interspersed with thick hedges and post and rail, it was in enviably good nick, and Ronnie bounded over it like a foundation mare.

  Seduced by the endless hazy green striated horizon, grateful for the peace of the place, Luca half listened as she pointed out the farm’s practical details in between sweeping views and statements. ‘We once had four hundred acres, but most of the land’s been sold – that’s a bridleway all along there, three miles of off-road at your hoof tips – here’s the bore hole – we don’t cut our own hay any more, so the sward’s rough as a reed bed – you can see four counties from here – there’s no arena but the turf’s so good we’ve never needed one – over there is Eyngate Park where the political Percys lived – this is where the stud’s best stallion is buried, see this plaque? – look down there and you’ll see the standing stones on Church Meadow, known as the White Witches, and that’s the village green off to the right. All weekender cottages there now, but there’s still a roaring local social scene. They will all love you. We need to find you a fiddle.’

  Luca didn’t want to think about his violin, splintered to firewood four thousand miles away.

  ‘There’s bound to be one. It’s so devilishly dull in winter, we all fiddle a bit.’ She let out that tiger-growl laugh he’d never forgotten. The way she kept stopping to cross her arms and strike a power pose was unspeakably sexy.

  She was the perfect feather pillow for a weary head, a tireless hedonist with old-fashioned manners. Ronnie knew how to find a good horse with her eyes closed, which made her irresistible. He and other male riders at Gestüt Fuchs had all made fools of themselves trying to chat her up. She’d run rings round them, much to the amusement of her Dutch lover, Henk.

  She hadn’t changed: an explosion of ageless positivity, and still just as blasé. The ‘sweet little stud in need of your magic touch’ was clearly riven with a big family feud, decrepitude in plain sight, the drunken daughter and frail old retainer like balls and chains around her legs. Beneath this bouncy welcome tour, there was the breathless relief of a Sister Maria let loose from the convent. Having always taken Ronnie to be as much a nomad as himself, he wondered what or who was keeping her captive. The brooding Australian was an obvious suspect.

  A big part of the answer came to him as they stood at the top boundary, overhung with skeletal ancient oaks, looking down at the secret valley in which the village nestled, a ridiculously pretty cliché of Englishness. Like Ronnie, it was pretending nothing was wrong in the world, and it was doing a convincing job, from its golden stone walls hugging each picture-perfect house and field to the smoke trails rising from its ornate chimney pots into a cold, cloudless blue sky, the dark rain chugging north to bother Shakespeare country, a rainbow cast in its wake. Luca half expected unicorns to come galloping beneath its arch, trumpeting the crock of gold.

  ‘What do you think?’ she asked, breathless from walking uphill fast.

  ‘You sell it well.’ He laughed, loving it, however archaic and arcadian. Luca wasn’t in search of a crock of gold, but something much less tangible, a free spirit he’d shared in younger years. The free spirit who had always cheered him up, who believed utterly in a talent. A spirit he’d always been a little bit in love with. One who, for all her plucky imperialism, could look him in the eye with a wise blue gaze and see straight to the truth.

  When Ronnie had first invited him to come and work at the stud,
he’d imagined that it would be just like this: an old-fashioned fairy-tale setting. What he hadn’t foreseen was the curse at its heart.

  Below them, he could see Beck trotting round the big sand pen, calmer now he wasn’t under scrutiny, and as beautiful as any myth. The shock of seeing him again had been like the explosion of smoke that brought the genie from the lamp. He was still blinking and taking it in. Be careful what you wish for; a fairy tale could fast become a pantomime or worse.

  He wished Ronnie would stop behaving like a thigh-slapping principal boy.

  ‘Let’s march on.’ She launched her way back down the hill, hurrying him. ‘Pax will think we’ve done a runner.’

  As he strode in her wake, hands plunged deep in his pockets, Luca was willing to forgive her all the jolly hockey sticks chivvying, accentuated here in her family home. Compared with Pax’s company, she was sunshine after a storm. And she was right to be worried about her daughter. He was worried about her daughter, her shadow across the fairy tale, Maleficent in her cottage.

  He needed his cavalry. Ronnie’s next tour stop was what he’d been waiting for.

  ‘Come and meet the Compton Magna herd,’ she said, holding open a gate. ‘You must tell me exactly what you think.’

  Growing up the middle of five brothers had taught Luca that sparing his words got him further and kept the peace. While a personality like Ronnie’s made everyone that she met feel like the only one in the room, Luca always observed a group as a whole. He was exactly the same around horses; quiet and watchful, aware of the dynamics between the personalities as much as the individuals. It’s what made him so good at studwork and breaking in, at conquering so-called ‘untrainable’ horses.

  He said nothing as she led him down to look at the in-foal mares out in the fields.

  The visiting mares that were being looked after until they foaled were uninspiring types – a few cobs and stringy ex-racers, and a warmblood showjumper common enough to pull a gun carriage. The home-owned mares were much higher spec, but they were no spring chickens – the four top foundation mares, all heavy with foals, had a combined age of seventy-six.

  In his last years at the helm, Jocelyn Percy had retained too many youngstock and hadn’t brought in new lines. Where the Percy family had once bred a much-admired mixture of thoroughbreds with enough blood to race and chase, the stud’s progeny was now more utilitarian; working hunters and entry-level eventers. The best youngstock had already been snapped up by Blair Robertson, it seemed; few of those remaining stood out – one buckskin colt was exceptional, and there were some nice full-blood three-year-old National Hunt stores – but the rest were mediocre.

  ‘That dun colt will win Badminton one day.’ Ronnie was ever-positive as she marched him onwards, blonde fringe swinging.

  Luca doubted the Compton Magna Stud would survive long enough to see it; it was unlikely to make it through another eighteen months, patently on its knees financially, brought there by a long era of Ronnie’s die-hard father selling off assets just to keep it running, with no thought to modernisation or improving the bloodline. Frozen in time like a museum, it was understaffed and poorly managed. Whilst it had possibly the best and most undervalued stallion in Europe charging around in its lowest paddock – his shouts ringing around the valley like a singing bell – it had none of the equipment required to stand him.

  ‘This is the covering barn.’ Ronnie showed him into a dingy broad-span with broken Yorkshire boarding and a potholed floor covered in straw and droppings. ‘It doubles up as a kindergarten through winter.’

  The grand limestone stable yards were beautiful by comparison, like a Downton Abbey backdrop. Accustomed to huge state-of-the-art facilities, Luca thought the once-grand Victorian stud was as quaintly impractical as an antique doll’s house. The date 1839 was stamped over one of the stable-yard arches.

  ‘How long’s your family run this place?’ he asked Ronnie.

  ‘They built it,’ she said simply, leading him to a big corner box where the stud’s long-standing – and last-standing – stallion, Cruisoe, bobbed his handsome head over the V grille, bellyaching for food and attention.

  Seven parts thoroughbred speed and stamina to an eighth cool-headed, no-nonsense draft, Cruisoe was Irish sports-horse aristocracy with the noble good looks of an Old Masters’ painting, coloured in by an excited child – his body bright gold, his mane, tail and points black. He was an extremely class act, but his pedigree was out of favour and, at twenty-one, he was pensionable. He was also carrying far too much condition, his legs filled and his over-crested neck hard as a stone bridge, eye-bulges hinting at early Cushing’s Disease.

  ‘He’s got quite a following for show-hunter breeding.’ Ronnie rubbed the old horse’s greying forehead and he leaned into her hand appreciatively. ‘Lester dotes on him. We think he’s got a few years in him yet.’

  Again, Luca said nothing.

  ‘You can see how much I need your Midas touch, Luca.’ Ronnie stepped back and looked up at the verdigris cupola topping the dome above the central archway, its weathervane horse galloping east. ‘I have to make some money out of this place this year. That means handling, backing, breaking and tarting up everything we can sell, and pimping that old Irish golden boy. Not to mention working out what the hell we do to transform Jekyll over here into Hyde.’

  Crossing the smaller second yard, as pretty as a miniature Oxford collage quad, Luca found a head collar and the chifney thrust in his hand, the round pen ahead. In it stood the horse that until today he’d thought he would never meet again.

  ‘It usually takes me and Lester an hour. Let’s see if you can do it any quicker.’

  ‘He’s hardly been out here forty minutes.’

  ‘Longer than that and he starts kicking it apart, believe me.’

  Luca could believe it. That horse could bring down a city if he chose to. His heart thudded hollow in his chest, the lump in his throat hard as bone knuckle, relief at knowing Beck was alive and safe was tempered by the danger this reunion put them both in.

  *

  Pax was a Pink Panther of clothes collection, slipping in and out of the Mack Shack unnoticed in little more than twenty minutes of minimalist packing. Not that there was anybody to see her on New Year’s Day: no builders – they’d been off for months anyway because Mack hadn’t paid them – and no neighbours, the closest a field away either side.

  Knott followed her round, yawning and trying to settle down to sleep whenever she stood still for a few moments, then wearily waking and tracking her down when she moved on. She moved on a lot, flitting from station to station, extracting, folding, neatening what was left behind.

  Throughout, she tried to imagine she was wearing blinkers, going straight to the drawers and cupboards containing the things she needed, not letting herself look around the fibreglass and metal caravan that had been home for two years. It had been left immaculately tidy as always, Pax’s natural propensity for mess rigidly controlled during her marriage. She’d been the last to leave the building; there were no surprises here. Holding herself together was made easier because Kes was tidied away too, his toys out of sight as usual, his room door shut. She wouldn’t let herself go in there.

  She took some washing out of the dryer and put it away, emptied the tiny countertop dishwasher and took down the cards and minimalist Christmas decorations, one to recycling, the other boxed back in the shipping container on the drive. She had to talk herself out of going outside to cut a winter spray to put on the coffee table. She wanted to leave it perfect, no room for error.

  An outsider looking in might have seen a perfectly normal-looking domestic scene, but Pax wasn’t remotely calm in her head: a thrash metal anthem was playing on a loop, her chest so full of beating heart it felt as though it was going to burst open her rib cage like saloon doors. She wanted to kick or break everything of Mack’s that she saw.

  She took a little food, mostly things with the shortest sell-by dates and the fruit nobody else would
eat, leaving the lion’s share for Mack’s return. When. If. When.

  He hadn’t picked up any of her calls. Anger and paranoia curdling, she resisted an almost overwhelming urge to take his new golf clubs and beat up his precious sports’ bike.

  Instead, forensically efficient, she extracted all the hidden vodka bottles, empty and full, and buried them as deeply in the skip on the drive as she could. Her throat burned throughout, tears boiling unwept behind her sinuses. It felt like burying a family pet, the dog she’d hugged through her marriage.

  Finally, she gathered up her laptop – not that it would be much use at the stud farm. She knew she should take advantage of the shack’s speedy Internet to look up all sorts of things first, but she could only think of one: she looked up the number for a divorce lawyer.

  *

  ‘Sloneczko, moje szczęście, kocjane… you are on fire!’ groaned Aleš ecstatically.

  Smiling, Bridge closed her eyes, partly because it felt so good, and partly because she never really liked the sight of her husband’s orgasm face, which seemed to transport him elsewhere, this other-wordly Aleš whose all-consuming pleasure was all his own. Hers was always a mutual thing, even if she was helping it along, a duet he liked to share, to watch, to help play its final note. His was a trumpet solo, his eyes losing focus from hers, thoughts retreating into pure sensation. For that split second of his carnal firework show, Bridge felt as though he was inside himself, not her, and she could be anyone.

  They had spent the last hour making love all over the ground floor of the cottage – on the floor, the sofa, against the fridge and, briefly, on the crackle-glaze table until the legs started to give way. Upcycled furniture lay toppled and upended everywhere, the brightly coloured cushions and throws scattered far and wide, along with biscuits, fallen Christmas cards and their abandoned clothes. Aunt Broda’s poo emoji jumper was in the kitchen sink, Aleš’s beanie was hanging from the wood-burner handle. His booming voice was telling her he loved his little kitten, little flower, little frog (when Aleš whispered sweet nothings, the whole village heard – he had no volume control). It had been clumsy, irrepressible, New Year reunion sex. Fantasy Ash, shut in the cellar throughout, had not been invited to join in. It was her husband’s red, eye-bulging face above its big beard she’d been with to the end, even if she couldn’t bring herself to look at it.