Country Lovers

by Fiona Walker

  She was feeling so neglected she’d even switched on her phone and texted Aleš to let him know where she was. He hadn’t yet replied. To add to her FOMO she had PMT, period pains tugging. Her lip throbbed again and her eyes itched. She wanted to be make-up free in the sagbag in Flavia and Zak’s room, hot wheat bag pressed to her belly, bingeing Julia Donaldson with them.

  ‘Who is this violinist we’re waiting for, Mrs Mazur?’ asked Auriol, every sibilant subtly slurred.

  ‘The Horsemaker.’ Bridge hammed up her own accent. ‘Many meet him but nobody knows him. The Don Quixote of the Comptons. They say he rides horses’ very souls.’

  ‘Is he any good at racing tips?’ Auriol looked impressed.

  ‘It’s a safe bet he’ll be racing away from here if he doesn’t pick his bow up soon.’ Bridge glanced at the biggest group of Turners, a broiling tattooed mass styled by Sports Direct.

  ‘I used to have a great many beaus,’ Auriol sighed, pulling a hip flask from her pocket and offering it across.

  Bridge took a swig purely out of professional duty – Amaretto, delicious – then perked up as a bearded blond figure stepped forward from the dark Turner massive, eyes lively, fiddle already at his chin.

  ‘Here he is!’ she told Auriol.

  ‘Beowulf!’ The headmistress shivered ecstatically, paying attention now.

  With a polite nod from Luca to the little crowd around him, the bow danced on the strings.

  ‘Oh my lord,’ Bridge gasped.

  Beside her, Auriol closed her eyes blissfully.

  When Luca played the fiddle, the village fell in love as one. The Lord of the Dance had arrived, his fingers racing across the strings like galloping thoroughbred legs, the bow whipping them on faster and faster as, picking up Zak, Bridge started to dance.

  Lucky, lucky Pax. Where was she?

  *

  Crossing the bigger yard with a bottle of plum gin under both arms and one in each hand, Pax stopped and listened, skin prickling. The music being carried up from the village orchard had changed timbre, its tempo heartbeat fast.

  Flanked by Knott and Stubbs, she hurried out to the arrivals yard, crossing beneath the carriage circle cedar and putting down the bottles, clambered up onto the stone wall beside the drive to sit and listen. She looked down on the glow in the village orchard and hugged her knees.

  It was exquisite.

  She touched her lips, reliving the kiss in her mind for the hundredth time. A very chaste kiss. And yet it had dropped a depth charge inside her that wouldn’t stop detonating.

  What was it Bridge had said last week: There’s no such thing as bad timing, just timing, and the clock’s ticking.

  On, the fiddle sang. Kes would love hearing it, thought Pax, the hard pinch of missing him in her chest. But it was already well past his bedtime, she reminded herself. Kes’s musical tastes so far peaked at Tractor Ted’s ‘Muck Spreading’. He could hear Luca play another time. If the Forsyths hadn’t swept him away, she’d be weeping quietly into the plum gin right now, agonising about her father’s secret. Instead, she’d shared her second wassail kiss in a lifetime. While the first had been too soon, the second made her feel like she was waking up after a hundred years asleep in a glass cage.

  There’s no such thing as bad timing, just timing.

  Pressing her hot cheeks to her denim knees, Pax let the music sink beneath her skin, briefly casting her mind back to the boy she’d kicked all those years ago, then to Luca again, to the soft pad of his lips, the taste of him. Had he felt the same headrush? She was a virgin again, like Madonna had told her she’d feel. She’d hardly evolved at all, in fact: the clown fall clumsiness wasn’t great; her baking would never win a man’s heart; calling him creepy could be improved upon, and then there was driving him to drink. But on the plus side, she no longer kicked.

  What felt like a stitch pinched at her sides, a heartburn balling towards her throat. Her eyes prickled. She thumped her chest as her breathing caught. It abated, then came back with a quivering reflux. It felt like hiccups at first. When holding her breath didn’t work, she thumped again, harder, to stop it interrupting her listening. But her body kept its regular jolt, spasms closer together, the cheeks of her face tightening, her eyes watering. Was she having a fit? She pressed her forehead to her knees. Breathe. Luca’s voice in her head.

  The reel skipped on, ever faster, twisting joyfully. Having scrabbled up onto the wall, Knott licked her chin. Stubbs was rabbiting unsupportively in the field in front of her.

  Still Pax struggled to breathe. The stitch worsened. The music was in her toes, torso, head, radiating out. She touched her eye, recalling the warmth of Luca’s fingers. If her heart was packing up, it was as noble a moment as any. Her ribs rattled. Again, she convulsed all over, replaying his kiss and her promise to forget everything.

  It was happening again, she realised with an explosion of glee. A high like no other, a concentrated joy that flushed out all the misery. As unexpected and welcome as that evening in the cottage kitchen when Mack had mistaken Luca for her lover and she’d realised she was finally free. She was laughing. High end, Grade A laughter. And this time, it was more than liberation; more than sensing she’d made it through the wilderness or could one day love someone new.

  This time she was laughing at herself. She’d missed that feeling so much.

  Climbing off the wall, she started to dance. Turning circles, stamping, throwing up her new ring finger, she danced across the turning circle, back beneath the cedar tree, and across to Lester’s cottage garden to let out Laurence the fox.

  *

  The Turners were all looking in the same direction for once. Social Norm’s oxygen mask was steamed up excitedly, Janine’s talons held her iPhone aloft, live-streaming on Facebook.

  Carly just watched, open-mouthed.

  Luca’s fingertips were almost too fast to see, perfectly pitched, stampeding, each bow stroke cutting into Carly’s heart because talent always hurt when it belonged to somebody modest. First the ‘Swallowtail Gig’ for Social Norm. Quicker and quicker, notes soaring as cleanly as curlew cries.

  Even Ash, freshly arrived with his rowdy lad army, stopped to listen on his way to the cider bar. ‘Better than the usual bollocks. Who is it?’

  ‘The new guy from the yard, the Horsemaker.’

  At this, he looked less impressed, turning to mutter something with Flynn, both men clearing throats with laughter before swaggering off.

  Carly ignored them, bewitched as Luca launched straight into another Irish gig, Turner feet stamping around her, all the family whooping. Grandpa Norm was wiping a tear. To this cliquey, tight-knit tribe, fellow nomad Luca was one of them. To Carly, he was from another world, his pure focus something she’d never seen before. She knew he’d had a few drinks, that there was tension between him and Pax, that he’d not wanted to perform at all. Yet he was lost in his music. She envied him that release, the self-control to use his gifts sparingly. She must learn everything he could teach her. Maybe, with his help, she could even heal Ash who rejoined her now, hard-muscled arm swinging around her like a fairground safety bar, proprietorial kiss on her head. Carly sensed the hum that ran through him like high-voltage power lines these days, a silent signal that she was in for a bumpy ride if he drank too much. He was spoiling for a fight. Carly didn’t want the bout with Jed to go ahead, but she sensed his need to discharge the pent-up energy. The safety catch was off, the hours of punching leather bags and crunching bench presses awaiting pay-off. If a fly dared land on him tonight, he’d right-hook it into space.

  ‘So he’s your new boss?’

  ‘I’m covering his days off mostly,’ she said, shrugging, deliberately indifferent, turning to watch a small group of revellers jigging around nearby, Bridge among them.

  Catching her looking, Bridge gave a double thumbs up, adding a high kick and a pelvic thrust for effect.

  Ash was still fixed on Luca. ‘He should be a professional.’

  ‘He is
,’ Carly said. ‘A horse professional.’

  Ash’s expression darkened yet more.

  Jig over, applause loud, Luca tried to take a polite bow and leave, but they bayed for more, shouting and whistling, bribing him with drink and refusing to let him hand the violin back. Smiling, his next piece was all too familiar. Carly recognised it from the first three notes, burning into her soul. As a ripple of ‘What is it? I know this!’ spread through the crowd, she sensed it was for her; she’d told him it was a leitmotif, and Luca played it so passionately that they all stopped to listen, some clapping along, others dancing, lit by bonfire flames and strings of fairy lights.

  ‘Last of the Mohicans!’ Ash and his lads were congratulating one another for identifying the film, ignoring Hardcase the music trivia expert arguing that it wasn’t the film’s main theme. ‘You don’t hear this until halfway through the movie. It’s called “The Kiss”.’

  Drifting away from them, Carly checked on the kids again – two fast asleep in the buggy, the third still charging round with his cousins – then she stood alongside Bridge, hugging herself tightly, both watching Luca play.

  ‘He can stay.’ Bridge was breathless from dancing. ‘As my grandma used to say: “If music’s the food of love, there’s no aphrodisiac like an Irish fiddler”.’

  ‘Did she really say that?’

  ‘Of course not. We’re a totally unmusical family. Uncle Pat plays the spoons, but it’s two bits of cutlery clacking together at the end of the day. This man’s fingers are pure sex appeal on a G-string.’ She lowered her voice. ‘But someone should tell him he only needs to lose that beard and the village wives would be on their knees.’

  ‘Maybe that’s why he has the beard?’ Carly grinned, grateful for Bridge’s dryness.

  She ruined it. ‘You wouldn’t say no, admit it.’

  ‘I’m going to pretend I didn’t hear that.’ Carly was mortified she might have given that impression.

  But Bridge, a stranger to discretion, was in waspish mood. ‘C’mon, queen, you’ve been like a cat with two fecking tails this afternoon, and on heat.’

  ‘Take that back!’ Carly snapped, glancing around to check that Ash was still talking film trivia out of earshot.

  ‘It’s all right, your man Luca’s besotted with Pax, so he’s no heed of it.’

  ‘You’re so wrong, Bridge.’

  ‘They’re star-crossed, trust me.’

  ‘Wrong about me! How can you imagine I think that way?’

  ‘Crazy, isn’t it? What would the woman married to the sexiest man in the village want mooning after Ronan Keating over there?’

  ‘Like you mooning over Ash, you mean?’ Carly felt mean as soon as she’d said it. Most of her friends in the garrison had fancied Ash. She’d never minded.

  Bridge’s eyes narrowed, chin lifting. On the familiar music danced, fast and furious. She tapped her foot in time defiantly. ‘Was it that fecking obvious?’

  ‘You said it, he’s the sexiest man in the village.’

  ‘In my defence, I was under the influence of some very black magic at the time.’

  Reading this as a typically cynical Bridge joke, Carly laughed. ‘Yeah, it’s called a boring marriage.’

  ‘Whose are you calling a boring marriage?’ Bridge flashed.

  ‘Easy, tiger! You’re always complaining that Aleš is getting on your nerves and—’

  ‘I am not!’ Bridge was quickly at her testiest. ‘My husband is a charming man who can build things and sing and cook and shag, all at the same time on occasion. And I’ll have you know he’s a fantastic lover. With a huge dick.’

  ‘Talking about me again, girls?’ laughed a voice behind them as Flynn sauntered across carrying a handful of brimming cups, Ash scowling behind him flanked by Hardcase and Ink.

  Flynn made a flirtatious beeline for Bridge. ‘Glad you came, hotlips. Mr Mazurati letting you play outside on your own again this evening?’

  ‘I’ve got the kids with me,’ she muttered, still looking irked, ‘and Mrs Bullock.’

  ‘Greetings!’ Behind her, Auriol raised a cup of cider. ‘Isn’t this jolly?’

  ‘All right, Bridge?’ Ash handed her a cup.

  ‘Good, yeah. Beezer,’ she muttered, not looking at him, and Carly felt sad, knowing that Bridge wouldn’t be her over-the-top party-girl self with him again. Ash needed lightness. Listening to the final strains of Last of the Mohicans, she wished she’d told Luca she liked a score for a more upbeat movie in which nobody stepped off a cliff – like The Muppets.

  When it came to an end to whoops and cheers, again Luca wasn’t allowed to put down his bow, plied with more drinks as the Turners shouted out requests for favourites: old jigs and reels from the Turners, ‘Come on Eileen’ and ‘Cotton Eye Joe’ from others, and from the lads’ corner Sex Pistols and Prodigy tracks.

  ‘Friggin’ in the Riggin’!’

  ‘Stop it, Hardcase,’ Carly hissed, watching Luca settling the fiddle beneath his chin. He was very pale; his eyes seemed miles away.

  He fixed the crowd with his killer smile. ‘This really is my last song. I hope you enjoy it. It’s called “Dick Gossip’s”.’ He launched into a lively tune.

  Flynn spluttered his drink everywhere. ‘Legend! He must have been listening in to your conversation, ladies. Dick Gossip’s. Love it.’

  Carly hoped it would at least cheer up Bridge.

  But she was still glum-faced. ‘It’s a well-known Irish reel.’

  ‘Remind me, is “Friggin’ in the Riggin” from HMS Pinafore?’ Auriol asked Hardcase, the two soon nose to nose talking music.

  ‘Word is Paddy there’s jumping both the mother and daughter,’ Flynn told Carly as they watched Luca’s bow moving ever faster.

  ‘Whose word?’ Carly scoffed.

  ‘I was shoeing horses up the hunt kennels last week and the head girl there swears there’s a threesome going on in a yard in this village…’

  ‘Better watch yourself, Carly,’ muttered Bridge.

  ‘It’s all happening, she says: fast riding and boozing, a cougar, a marriage on the rocks.’

  ‘Now who’s the dick gossip?’ Bridge ribbed him.

  ‘It’s not like those two at the stud don’t have form,’ Flynn pointed out. ‘Everyone in the hunt knows Bay Austen’s already been there.’

  ‘You don’t want to listen to banter,’ Carly dismissed.

  ‘Actually, rumours in established hierarchies like work places and rural communities are ninety-five per cent accurate according to research,’ Bridge offered helpfully. ‘I learned it on an HR course.’

  ‘That’s it.’ Ash drained his cup. ‘You’re not working there, Carly.’

  ‘Bridge didn’t mean it, did you? Take it back, Bridge.’

  ‘Will not.’ Her stubborn face reminded Carly of Sienna refusing to eat vegetables.

  ‘You’re only saying it because I hurt your feelings.’

  ‘Am not.’

  The violin was getting faster and faster.

  ‘Bridge,’ she implored.

  ‘What if it’s true?’ Her eyes gleamed, mood lifted by the wind-up. ‘Before you know it, you’ll find yourself stripped naked and strapped to the saddle rack by a pair of stirrup leathers.’

  ‘Can I buy tickets?’ asked Flynn.

  On the reel flew: dum-da-da-da-da-da, dum-da-da-da-da-da, dum-da-da-da-da-da…

  Carly felt her heartbeat match it, indignant and livid. ‘Take that back, Bridge, or we’ll tell Ash the real reason you’re mad at me, shall we?’

  ‘Tell me what?’ Ash glanced round.

  ‘Bridge?’ Carly demanded, not caring.

  Bridge stared back wide-eyed, like a cat facing a vacuum cleaner nozzle. ‘Can you not take a fecking joke?’ she blasted. ‘I’m only ruminating on a bit of idle talk here, and you can’t deny the statistics or the fact that Pax has a hold over golden boy over there that my eyes tell me makes him very hot under the collar, and my eyes don’t lie.’ Talking as fast as the fiddle b
ow, she was refusing to back down on principle. ‘So don’t you drag me into your jealous imaginings about your husband – who, incidentally, only ever showed me kindness when he spent ages patching up my face without even demanding so much as a cup of coffee – and don’t you threaten me with anything, Carly Turner.’ Then, as unexpected as the Queen throwing a V-sign, Bridge welled up, turning quickly away to hide it.

  ‘WHO is UPSETTING my WIFE?’ demanded a hundred-decibel war cry behind them. Man-mountain Aleš towered over them all in a donkey jacket and woolly hat.

  ‘Carly, apparently.’ Flynn held up his hands and stepped back.

  ‘HOW?’ demanded Aleš, who only had two volume settings, loud and deafening.

  ‘Oi!’ Ash stormed forwards, all squared shoulders and clenched fists. ‘Don’t you raise your voice at my wife like that.’

  ‘Whoa,’ Carly tried to soothe him. ‘They’re my ears, bae.’

  Aleš jerked up his chin dismissively at Ash and turned to his own wife, booming voice tender, ‘What is it that has upset you, kochanie?’

  ‘Already forgotten.’ Bridge mopped her eyes on her sleeve, glancing at Carly, repentant. They both knew their husbands would fight at the slightest provocation.

  ‘An incident involving Mr and Mrs Turner, I believe,’ Auriol prompted as kindly as she would the parents of two Year Threes snivelling in her office. ‘Something about coffee – or was it group sex?’

  ‘That’s bollocks,’ Bridge scoffed, then went pale as it occurred to her that she was addressing her new boss, commonly nicknamed Bollocks.

  Thankfully, Auriol was too spellbound by the testosterone levels pumping between Ash and Aleš to notice.

  ‘What upset my wife?’ the Polish builder was demanding as he squared up to Ash. He was far taller and larger, but his body was soft, his eyes kind. It was like a brown bear goading a panther.

  ‘No idea.’ Ash pulled back his chin, head tipped, face insolent.