Country Lovers Read online

  The vodka had barely touched the sides. When she tried to call room service for another, there was no answer. They were all probably in the bar. She could get free drinks in the bar, she remembered.

  Luca O’Brien was arriving soon. She had to limit herself. One more at most. Two if he really was delayed until the early hours.

  She ran a bath to stall for time, chin deep in bubbles, eyes closed briefly, until the thought of losing Kes forced her back out with a great tide of splashing water. She had to keep moving.

  Pacing around her room again dried her off. She pulled on her jeans and tee. The heating was stifling.

  After eleven. She checked her mother’s phone, hoping Luca O’Brien had the sense to try that number now hers was useless. Nothing. Bloody man. Bloody men.

  It was no good. She’d have to go to the bar. She was stopping at midnight.

  4

  Accustomed to Aleš demanding silent concentration on movie night, turning on Polish subtitles and rewinding to slo-mo through his favourite bits, Bridge had almost forgotten what it was like to watch a movie with a girlfriend in under two hours, the way it became background noise the better the conversation got, like covering fire, while they got down to the nitty-gritty of putting the world to rights. They’d chatted throughout Futureland, polishing off another bottle of red and all the nachos. It reminded her of nights with Bernie, back in the Kilburn days.

  Vaguely aware that she was starting to talk very loudly and swear even more than usual, Bridge boasted about her first big job and how high up the management ladder she’d climbed; about the business degree her company had sponsored her to take; about her plans to get her career back on track.

  ‘Sure, will you listen to me mithering on like I’m on The Apprentice?’ she checked herself, disappointed to find the wine bottle empty again.

  ‘Sir Alan would bloody love you.’ Carly took it all in good spirit, not competitive and edgy like the Saddle Bags, those pretty Mexican eyes sleepy, the sweet Wiltshire voice amused as she admitted she’d only ever dogsbodied in dead-end jobs.

  ‘I don’t need no CV at a job interview. I just show them the state of my hands.’

  Then she had Bridge in stitches describing what it was like to work for her sister-in-law, Janine, who ran her contract cleaning, mobile nail studio and new dog-walking businesses in tandem like a gangland boss. ‘She never forgives. A couple of months back, she called a staff meeting to put a hex on this woman from Broadbourne Lane who sacked Fluffy Dusters for not hoovering beneath the beds. We had to burn herbs in candle flames and all sorts.’

  ‘Did it work?’ Bridge was agog. Practical Magic was another favourite film.

  Carly winked. ‘According to Janine they’ve got mice and mould all over the place.’

  ‘Is that like a Romany curse?’ Bridge loved the twice annual arrival of the Turner family’s many traveller cousins and kin, en route to Stow Horse fair. Aleš, who was paranoid his tools would get nicked, couldn’t understand her fascination.

  ‘Nah, she got it off Facebook.’

  Most of all they talked about kids, laughed about kids – their little ones that were toddling and crawling, not ones in full-time education like the older Bags. And they talked horse, Carly’s great love of them consolidating since moving to the village. Having made friends with local ones over gates and in the studs’ fields, her natural affinity was clear. Petra’s children’s ponies waited at their fence for her every day, and all the Bags were familiar with the extraordinary story of one of the stud’s valuable colts, saved by Carly when last year’s big autumn storm brought down a tree on him. Gill still called it a miracle.

  ‘Is it true it was your healing hands that stopped Ronnie Percy’s best foal from bleeding to death?’

  Carly ducked her head modestly. ‘I told her your vet friend did most of it, but Ronnie reckons I could use my gift to work with horses. Says she’ll help set me up if I lend them a hand over there.’

  ‘Hang on, she’s offered you a job?’

  ‘It was a bit vague, if I’m honest. She’s got this expert coming over from America or somewhere she says might teach me handling and stuff.’

  ‘The Horsemaker?’

  ‘That’s him. I’m not sure. Things is, I want a skill, not a gift.’ She looked at her hands with their eight plastic nails, explaining that what she really longed to learn was an old-fashioned country craft like saddlery or blacksmithing. When she’d heard Flynn was looking for an apprentice, Carly had set her heart on farriery. ‘But he’s a right sexist sod. He wants my Ash to do it and so does Ronnie come to that. She says Healing is an old country skill.’

  ‘Yeah, like witchcraft and prostitution.’

  Carly laughed, and Bridge was reminded how pretty she was beneath the constant frown and tired eyebags.

  ‘It freaks people out,’ she said, looking at her hands again. ‘Ronnie’s all for it, but other people reckon it’s just a con or voodoo or something. My Ash doesn’t like it at all.’

  Bridge guessed that was the real reason she was doubtful about taking up Ronnie’s offer. Carly would take it up like a shot if her husband approved. She felt another spark of connection.

  ‘Janine swears that hex of hers only worked cos of me.’ Carly laughed again. ‘She keeps getting me to lay hands on Uncle Norm’s betting slips.’

  ‘I’ve a lottery ticket somewhere you can have a go at.’ Bridge went to fetch another bottle of wine, although Carly was still nursing the glass she’d refilled an hour ago.

  ‘If it worked liked that I’d lay my hands on our knackered washing machine and a lot else besides.’ Carly watched her over the sofa back. ‘I’d better just text Ash and let him know we’re still nattering.’

  It was the third text she’d sent him that night, Bridge noticed, and he was only next door. Everyone around here knew who Ash Turner was, even if he wasn’t seen out much. She’d heard plenty of rumours about the rebel family’s war hero, mostly old ones from his ill-gotten youth as village tearaway, but also newer stories from the Cotswold wives who fawned over him at the gym. No wonder Ash’s wife wanted to keep herself visible to him, like a radar blipping. He certainly caught the eye on the dipping bars, torso ripped with muscles like cobbles. Not that she’d been looking.

  They’d kept off the subject of marriage all evening, but Bridge was insightful enough to guess this was because they both had tricky ones. Who didn’t in the Comptons? Even perfect Petra’s was a finely balanced house of forgotten Valentine’s cards.

  Safer to talk career, Bridge’s current obsession. Like a terrier with a rope, she found subjects hard to let go, badgering Carly to ask Ronnie Percy what she meant by ‘help out’. ‘Working with horses would be perfect for you.’

  ‘Doesn’t pay much though, does it? I’m best waitressing at the posh pub, I reckon,’ Carly said as her fingers clicked on the screen. ‘My mum used to love Sous Vide,’ she pronounced it ‘sows-vied’.

  Bridge’s lip curled.

  The nickname Sous Vide – literal translation ‘under vacuum’ – was strangely fitting given the way celebrity cook Suzy David sucked up to anyone who would further her career, and shrank away from hard-working commoners like Bridge.

  ‘Suzy David’s a sour-faced witch, trust me.’ She plonked back down on the sofa beside Carly. ‘I can’t believe I flew back here to be insulted. In fact, do you remember the words of that hex? We’ll cast a fecking spell on her.’

  ‘Don’t be daft,’ Carly scoffed.

  But Bridge was already reaching for her iPad. Too much red wine always made Walsh women brazen. ‘It’s on Facebook, you say?’

  ‘You can’t curse the pub!’

  Bridge had never realised there were so many incantations on offer if one had enough coloured candles and ribbons, a well-stocked herb garden and a chalk pentacle. ‘It says here tonight’s extra potent being New Year. Look at all these spells! This one promises to Bring Forth New Love?’

  ‘I’m fine in that department, than
ks.’

  She scrolled down. ‘Here we go, Get Your Dream Job – all we need’s white candles, olive oil and dried basil. Bit like a romantic meal, ha!’

  New Year in the Comptons was proving much more enlightening than thigh-slapping her way through incomprehensible folk songs with Aleš’s family in Poland, Bridge thought cheerfully as she fell over the cats in the kitchen, forgetting that she hadn’t fed them. Within a minute, she’d gathered the ingredients and pulled back the rug to draw a wonky chalk pentacle on the flagstones.

  ‘Trust me, you’re getting me out of a tight spot with a kebab van and a potential lawsuit here,’ she told Carly, who had reluctantly knelt down beside her. ‘Right, we incant this…’ She swiped her screen lock code and started reading it out, ‘Ancient One of the earth so deep—’

  ‘You sure about this?’ Carly was fighting giggles.

  ‘Too right I am. You and me will be storming up through that glass ceiling this year, girl. Master of moon and sun, we summon you. Come, come, come!’

  ‘You’re hilarious. You should’ve been in the village panto,’ Carly snorted and started repeating the words, ‘Come, come, come!’

  There was a sharp rap on the window and her giggles turned to a shriek. Flynn and the lads were peering in, a muffled cry going up through the glass, ‘What are you girls fucking doing?’

  ‘It’s a board game!’ Bridge waved a dismissive arm. ‘Stop spying.’

  ‘We’re going to the hall. You coming?’

  ‘We’ll follow you there!’ Carly looked at Bridge. ‘You’ll come too, won’t you?’

  ‘In a onesie?’

  ‘You can get changed.’

  ‘I’ll think about it.’ She guessed she probably needed to dance off the wine and nachos – but wishing for a career boost was much more important than finding a frock and heels right now. She tried to picture herself in top-to-toe L. K. Bennett’s new season collection, powering past Sous Vide in a Porsche flicking Vs. Anything but a white overall and a kebab van. The candle flame leapt. ‘Now repeat this and stir that saucer of oil anti-clockwise three times with your ring finger – where was I? – We summon you to bring your all-powerful magick, Master, and fuse the union of spirits cast here. Who writes this shit? There’s another three verses. I’ll put some music on for atmosphere.’

  Wolf Alice filled the cottage with haunting cries, while Bridge took a quick loo break – realising just how pissed she was when she couldn’t work out how to undo her onesie and losing another battle with doubled-up laughter – before completing the spell. She defied anyone to say, ‘Fill us with your amity, Master! We are receptacles for desire’ without hamming it up like Morgan le Fay.

  ‘Are you sure it was for a dream job?’ Carly looked sceptical afterwards. ‘What was all that stuff about orgasmic rainbows?’

  Refreshing the page, Bridge realised she’d read out the love spell by mistake. Never mind, it was all good fun nonsense. Best say nothing, given Carly’s heebie-jeebies about her healing powers. ‘Just you fecking wait for the career offers to pour in.’

  She felt fantastically liberated and full of mischief, her onesie-night stand hijacked by wine and witchcraft. ‘Now let’s quickly hex the pub then we can go over to the village hall to dance our tits off; it’s got to be almost midnight.’

  *

  ‘Your name, Teeshy, it ees like a sneeze, no?’

  ‘Yes, ha ha!’ Pax heard her own canned laughter on cue, politely light-hearted.

  Being chatted up in a bar full of strangers felt like playing a cameo in a B-movie: woman from out of town perches on bar stool and attracts the attention of a lonesome cowboy at the pool table or, in her case, a short, lascivious Frenchman with over-whitened teeth and extremely hairy wrists. For her last vodka shots as an unhappy, drunken wife, she figured she might as well use Mack’s loathsome pet name for her. He thought Tishy was with another man tonight; now she was.

  ‘Teeshy. Pretty, like you.’

  She had no idea what her admirer was called; he’d introduced himself as something Gallic and unpronounceable, but he was getting on her nerves with his roaming eyes and uh-hu uh-hu laugh.

  Short, swarthily good-looking and dressed expensively, he’d hit on her straight away, reeking of Joop! Homme and self-satisfaction, as flirty as Pepé Le Pew. His plans to join old friends in Paris for New Year had been scuppered by the fog, he’d explained. Like her room and bar bill, he was entirely complimentary.

  ‘You have a beautiful smile, Teeshy. Let me buy you another drink.’

  ‘I’ll get my own, thanks.’ She tried to catch the eye of the barman who was filling flute after flute with cheap fizzy wine in anticipation of the imminent countdown.

  The hotel bar was crowded thanks to all the grounded flights – synthetic jazz music piped through ceiling speakers, party spirits roaring, its huge, muted television screen ready to show the New Year fireworks. The countdown clock read seven minutes to twelve. Surrounding Pax were a curious mix of the displaced and the nightshifters taking a short break – couples, families, co-workers – all determined to make the most of things.

  The barman was refusing to catch her eye. How many vodkas had she had? Just two, surely. And the one in her room. She must keep count. Maybe make this next one an espresso martini to keep her sharp. It would be her last. She’d sober up with fresh air taking the puppy for a wee break, followed by unadulterated caffeine in privacy upstairs.

  Thinking about the deerhound made her jump guiltily. She needed to check him soon. Just one more drink. She waved at the barman, but he’d turned away to serve a crowd of grounded Germans.

  Hairy Wrists had moved his bar stool closer, his tailored suit leg pressed against her denim one now.

  ‘Eef you won’t let me buy you champagne,’ he breathed, instantly summoning the barman for her with no more than a raised finger as though they had concealed earpieces, ‘then let me tell you about myself while I work out how to seduce you, Teeshy.’

  She laughed her canned laugh again. A bottle of vodka was the most reliable way of getting her horizontal, she wanted to point out. Ordering her martini with relief, she noticed him knock back a flute of fizz in just one mouthful, which struck her as strangely unFrench, as was the wink he gave her. ‘You like what you see, no?’

  Dark-browed, with a mole like a beauty spot on his upper lip, Hairy Wrists reminded her of a dissolute eighteenth-century vicomte. Probably early forties, his cocky swagger was redeemed by melting laughter-creased brown eyes, the first grey flecks in the black hair lending him gravitas. He worked in industrial development, he told her. Two sons living with his British ex-wife, the divorce recent enough to make him catch himself and look away to regroup. Theirs had been a town and country life. He’d kept the country house. He loved shooting. He cooked. He played tennis. He had two race horses in training. His greatest love after his children was his Braque du Bourbonnais bitch, Cher Cher.

  Had he bothered to ask her about herself, he’d have discovered that they were surprisingly well matched on paper. In a year or two, they could be meeting on a blind date set up by mutual friends, his amour propre and diminutive stature a turn-off in sobriety. Would her world ever change that much? It seemed another lifetime.

  She felt a warm hand on her leg and looked down to see a gold chronograph watch, its face as complicated as a flight deck, nestled amid her admirer’s jungle of arm hair. Six more minutes to get drunk. As she lifted the hand away, his manicured fingers threaded through hers. His white smile flashed wolfishly and he leaned in to her, Joop! Homme wafting, breath warm on her ear, his champagne-scented voice exotic. ‘Normal rules do not apply on nights like thees, no? Two strangers in strange place. Take off that wedding ring and see how different it makes you feel.’ He kissed her fingertips.

  A flutter inside, long forgotten. Not for him. For deception.

  She snatched her hand away.

  ‘Five minutes to go!’ the call went around.

  A surge of new arrivals had come in
to the hotel, wheeling suitcases, some already in the bar, different European languages criss-crossing; a plane must have somehow managed to land or a coach had arrived, mostly uniformed flight staff in transit, along with a few passengers sent to the hotel to await transfers.

  The bar staff were racing around with the trays of free fizzy wine.

  Hairy Wrists had already lined up flutes in front of them, enough for several friends, his smile even wider.

  She held up her hand. ‘I gave up wine this year.’

  ‘You tell a Frenchman that!’ The uh-hu uh-hu laugh again. ‘Why?’

  ‘I have a drink problem.’ There, she’d said it.

  On cue, her martini arrived. Pax threw it back in two gulps. She was nowhere near her threshold. There would be no drunken farewell to her spirit friends with just minutes left to drink before sobriety forever.

  The warm hand was on her arm now.

  ‘Me also,’ he said, and something in his tone made her turn. The soulful brown eyes held hers. ‘I was five years sober. I relapsed when my wife walked out on me. Salut!’ He downed another, then traded it for a full glass which he handed to her. ‘I go back to rehab next week. This is, how you say in English, my last drunken dance. Dance with me, no?’ His dark, unblinking gaze wouldn’t let her go.

  She had a running mate. Four minutes to try to hit the wall.

  Pax took the flute, fingertips trapped in his for a moment.

  ‘Different rules apply,’ he reminded her, dark eyes like GO signs, picking up another for himself.

  She thought about Mack on the garage roof accusing her of adultery and, guilty tears rising from nowhere, almost bolted. But she needed this drink, and if Mack thought so little of her, she was doing nothing to worsen his opinion of her by playing the drunken tart.