The Country Lovers Read online

  It riled rebel-hearted Bridge that her family now accused her of being the snob, especially sister Bernie, who claimed this was because they were born either side of midnight on the twenty-first of March, meaning she, as the older twin, was a generous, broad-minded Pisces while Bridge was a tough, ambitious Aries. ‘That’s also why you argue with everyone,’ Bernie had insisted when they’d last spoken across whatever time zone divided them, ‘it’s star-crossed.’

  Bridge – who held no truck with astrology – thought she argued with everyone because she was just plain cross. There nothing starry about Bridge Mazur.

  ‘Sous Vide can stuff her fecking job.’ She thrust her chin up, still smarting from the rejection. She’d never dream of telling the Bags that the cook had accused her of being out of touch, finding every hole in her CV and tripping her up on her data protection know-how.

  ‘Good for you!’ Gill rallied.

  ‘She doesn’t deserve me.’ Bridge summoned a big smile to show the others she wasn’t bothered, turning to look at the pretty old limestone inn as they trotted past it. The painted hoarding boasted a grand reopening of ‘Suzy David’s The Hare at Compton’ on Burns Night. ‘Which is a pain in the arse because it’s fecking well-paid and practically next door.’

  ‘Utter hell to work for, I should imagine,’ Gill reassured her as they slowed back to walk at the junction. ‘They said that poor little Russian she danced with on Strictly had to go into therapy afterwards.’

  ‘I feel much the same after taking to the dance floor to “Come on Eileen” with my husband,’ Petra pointed out. ‘And Charlie can’t rustle up a seared plantain black rice risotto afterwards.’

  ‘Is it going to be all veggie food, then?’ Mo read the hoarding in alarm.

  ‘Vegan.’ Gill shuddered. ‘Her raw food fine-dining restaurants are all the rage: Cirencester, Cheltenham and Chippy have one. The Bardswolds are the last preserved limestone outpost south of Birmingham. Sous Vide vient ici. Allumez les feux, mes copains!’

  ‘Is that one of her dishes?’ Mo sniffed.

  ‘It’s all smoke and mirror glazes.’ Petra winked at Bridge.

  ‘Gill’s saying light the fires in French, queen,’ she translated for Mo’s benefit.

  Of all the corners of the Cotswolds, the Fosse Hills were the one restaurateurs always found hardest to crack. Known as the Bardswolds for its proximity to Shakespeare’s Stratford-upon-Avon, its wealthy home crowd was less fashion-led and London-centric than the other wolds, strong-willed Midlanders and old money, taste buds still craving comfort food and hearty British puddings. Eating remained a noisy, sociable recreation around here, not an on-trend artform.

  ‘When Suzy asked me if I preferred kimchi to kefir, I thought she was talking about Greek fecking islands,’ Bridge admitted. ‘Not my thing, all that sour grub. And I can’t imagine any locals popping in for wood-aged single-hop organic craft beer at a tenner a pop, can you?’

  ‘What’s the use of all that trendy nonsense round here?’ chuckled Mo. ‘It’ll go out of fashion before the blackthorn loses its blossom. We’ll get the old Jug back by the time the spring lambs are ready to roast, ladies.’

  ‘I plan to have thighs like a whippet and a washboard stomach by then,’ Gill said through gritted teeth.

  ‘Eat at the village pub and you will!’ Mo’s chuckle turned into a big guffaw.

  Bridge – who was prone to grand pronouncements – had worked her way up to a New Year’s Eve one as, standing in her stirrups, she declared, ‘Ladies, if I don’t have meaningful employment by the time that fecking pub opens, I’m setting up a kebab van opposite. You heard it here first.’

  It was only when her three companions whooped in delight, taking turns to high five her, that it occurred to Bridge they might just hold her to the wager. Her Saddle Bags honour was at stake. She had to get a job, and fast.

  *

  ‘Blast the blasted thing!’ Ronnie waved her phone around, failing to get the thinnest wedge of a signal. She’d tried all the usual sweet spots – the top coppice, the watchtower over the furthest stable-yard arch and the gate by the walled garden – and now she’d even come up to the dust-festooned attic in the hope it might have reception, but there was nothing. Pulling her reading glasses from crown to nose, she frowned at the screen.

  Her reply to Blair’s text was still there with a red unsent cross beside it: Happy New Year. A bland, innocent-looking greeting to an outsider, but loaded with meaning for two on-off lovers, one of them married, the other under disapproving family scrutiny, their five-year love affair date-stamped with just such messages.

  When Off, no phone calls was the unspoken rule. Calling was pressing the red button. They’d last spoken just days ago, but he’d believed that she was leaving the country then. Now Ronnie’s plans had changed, the trip switch on their volatile relationship had been reset. Blair’s text message was testing the circuit. Picked up in a momentary patch of phone signal, it had made her morning. Now she couldn’t reply in kind.

  Damn this rural go slow. Her late father’s refusal to allow a cellular mast on his land must have scuppered many a love affair in mobile-blackspot Compton Magna. With just one business landline and no Internet – also a legacy from the intransigent Captain Percy – the village’s stud was still in the communication dark ages. Taking no notice of stallion-man Lester’s proclamations that the world wide web was full of Russian spies, Ronnie had ordered the cheapest broadband deal available weeks ago. Multiple cancelled engineers’ visits later, the cabinet, telegraph pole and copper wire in the lane had all been pronounced inadequate, another engineer booked for February. How could anyone hope to sell horses with no mobile signal or Internet, she wanted to wail, let alone commit adultery?

  Her son-in-law, a bullish property developer, had spent much of last week’s Boxing Day family get-together trying to persuade Ronnie to hire the ‘smart-home nerd’ who connected up the luxurious houses he and Pax renovated, installing all sorts of fibre-optic wizardry so that they were practically supercomputers with a roof. It sounded ridiculously expensive, and Ronnie could tell from Pax’s fixed-on-fingernails glare that she didn’t agree with the idea.

  Her youngest daughter had looked thin and drawn that day, drinking too much and saying little. Although Pax smoothly denied anything was wrong, Ronnie read something into the fact she wasn’t joining her in-laws in Scotland this New Year, insisting she could usefully cover the yard while her mother visited old friends, adding candidly, ‘It’s easier being there when you’re not around.’ Their relationship was butterfly-wing fragile, upsetting it likely to ripple out through the family. Of Ronnie’s children, all trustees of the stud with her, only Pax supported keeping the business running; the other two wanted it sold off. The trio judged her harshly for past mistakes, and rightly so Ronnie felt. She had a lot to prove.

  It was probably a good reason for keeping her nose clean with Blair. None of her children approved of their close friendship, even though the only reason the stud could pay its feed bill this winter was because he’d done her a favour and bought a lorry full of unbroken four-year-olds in the autumn. The reason he could afford to do that, they’d no doubt point out, was because he was married to a woman rich enough to pay.

  Blair Robertson, legendary Australian rider, had been a close friend of Ronnie’s for over three decades, one of the loyal brigade to stand by her when she’d fled her marriage, just as she had defended him in the nineties when he’d shocked the eventing world by running off with the wife of one of its greatest aristocratic patrons, a ravishing countess twenty years his senior. It had taken ‘Mr Sit Tight’ a great many hard-won championships, team medals and feats of bravery to reclaim his reputation as the daring darling of the sport, as famously hot-headed with rivals as he was cool-headed with his horses. By then, Ronnie had become a near neighbour of the Robertsons’ big yard in Wiltshire, one of the few to know the tragic truth behind the great love story: Verity’s ill health had stolen her away from Bl
air just a few years after their marriage, early onset Alzheimer’s gradually depriving her of almost all memory of him. He cared for her stoically, helped by a small team at home, but he’d long since lost the woman he’d risked everything to love. His affair with Ronnie, born of friendship and forged by intense physical attraction, had knocked them both for six. Passionate, mutually adoring, it was soul-deep in affection and allegiance, but it would devastate Verity’s family and friends if they ever found out about it.

  Conscience pricked, Ronnie tapped her phone against her chin. Let her reply wait until she drove out of the blackspot. Dangerous enough to be celebrating New Year in their former stomping ground, partying just a few fields from Blair’s farm. Not that their paths would cross; Blair was an honourable absentee from the old Wiltshire set these days, his once-sociable wife no longer able to remember who her neighbours were.

  ‘Blast it!’ She stalked to one of the little windows, slapping the phone down on the sill, unable to fool herself. They both had their fingers hovering over the red button, she and Blair: Ronnie deliberately tempting fate by agreeing to the Wiltshire invitation, his message sent to test her reaction time. Without a laggy signal, it would have been less than a minute.

  He knew how she ticked. Tough, no-nonsense Ronnie, serial survivor, was struggling to close the lid on this one, no matter how explosive and impossible the match. They’d flirted through nearly four decades of friendship before becoming lovers. Blair’s obstinate, bloody-minded possessiveness held no surprises. And whether fifteen or fifty-something, her Percy pride hadn’t changed either – nothing short of tragedy would compel her to pick up the phone and call him. That old-fashioned purring landline. It had once rung non-stop: clients, villagers, friends, hunt members, salesmen, boyfriends. Silent more days than not, now. They didn’t even get ambulance chasers or PPI cold calls. And nobody had rung enquiring about putting a mare to a Percy stallion or buying a youngster in months.

  She wiped condensation off one of the windowpanes with a finger, its glass a rain-stained sepia from lack of cleaning. These attic rooms offered the best view across two beautiful hidden Cotswolds valleys: the Comptons from the other side, Eynhope Park from this, once the stately seat of far grander Percy ancestors. The stud’s undulating, wood-fringed land in the foreground always lifted her spirits, even at its monochrome, muddy winter worst, and with hundreds of its acres long since sold off by her father. A lion’s mane of winter wheat now surrounded the remaining fields and paddocks, but the Percy pride still roared at its heart.

  Convinced the stud’s revival would bring her family closer together, Ronnie refused to be daunted by the hard work needed to make it profitable by the trustees’ deadline. She just had to attract owners, generate stud fees and sell horses fast. Horse-trading was in her blood.

  Behind her, Ronnie’s two small dogs were rooting round the skirting boards on the hunt for mice, sneezing at the dust. Tough, low-slung black and tans – mother and daughter Lancashire Heelers – their tails gyrated at a fresh scent.

  ‘Catch ’em, girls,’ she urged. ‘Got to make this place habitable.’ She glanced round the room, part of a long-neglected staff flat. Blast the housekeeper for going AWOL just when they needed her most, a handwritten note delivered last week to say she was fed up working for nothing.

  Well, she couldn’t afford to buy Pip back when she had a new work rider to pay.

  Hired before she’d changed her mind about staying on, Luca O’Brien was an added expense Ronnie knew she must justify. Having poached him from a big Canadian showjumping yard, she’d vetoed both daughters’ demands to withdraw the job offer at the last minute. No rider could make a horse look as good as Luca; added to which he wasn’t afraid to muck in and get his hands dirty, could manage a yard, and never stopped smiling. Lester had his teeth gritted too tightly in disapproval to muster much joy these days.

  She watched the small, bowed figure in the distance, throwing open the gate to the winter turn-out then limping back to the broad-span barn to let out a stampede of yak-like woolly beasts, kicking and squealing as they charged into the field to shake off the straw, playfight and roll. Somewhere beneath all the matted hair and mud were some decent youngsters, she hoped. And whinnying furiously from his stallion box in the yard, trumpeting his superiority, her beautiful grey powerhouse would wow fellow breeders just as soon as she figured out how to defuse the bomb in his head.

  Her phone face lit up on the windowsill, notifications pinging. ‘At last!’

  Happy New Year had a green tick beside it now. A moment later, How are you keeping? appeared in a bubble below it, followed by, O’Brien there yet? The prospect of Ronnie sharing close quarters with a cavalier young globetrotter had irritated Blair from the start. So that’s why he was marking his territory.

  About to reply with a cool ‘not yet’ – flying out of Ontario today, Luca had a forty-eight-hour Dublin stop-off to see family – Ronnie realised the signal was lost again. Leave it there, she told herself firmly, pocketing her phone. He’ll get the message.

  *

  Having worked off more Christmas pounds cantering around the set-aside field beside the cricket pitch, Bridge felt her spirits rallying as the Bags started discussing New Year’s Resolutions.

  ‘Being a feck-off high flyer again by Easter,’ she told them.

  ‘Mine’s to meet my deadline for once,’ Petra vowed.

  ‘I want a new SMC,’ sighed Mo. ‘Jed Turner’s lost his sparkle since the conviction.’

  The SMC – or Safe Married Crush – was a Saddle Bag rite of passage, the mainstay of the frustrated Cotswold wife, a fairy-tale fantasy about somebody out of reach, conveniently close to home.

  ‘Our local member has lost his too,’ muttered Gill whose comedy crush on the Fosse Vale MP – which all the Bags knew was a smokescreen for her far more heartfelt crush on local weekending theatre director, Kit Donne – had been flushed out further by inappropriate behaviour rumours on social media involving a Business Enterprise drinks party, an Arab strap and a junior secretary called Justin.

  ‘Let’s all nominate new ones!’ Petra’s eyes lit up.

  ‘Bagsy me the hunky husband from Well Cottage.’ Bridge, more competitive than carnal, laid her claim before Petra could. She’d never really got the point of the SMC, but she enjoyed beating the others to a new object of desire.

  ‘Say who?’ Mo loved fresh blood.

  Bridge exchanged a glance with Petra, WhatsApp emojis already hot-swapped on the subject. ‘They’re renting the holiday let while Aleš builds them a house on the Broadbourne Road.’

  ‘Not that modern monstrosity we all objected to?’ Gill looked disapproving. ‘Replacing old Mr Noakes’s bungalow?’

  ‘It’s carbon-neutral, stripped-back modern living,’ Bridge insisted. The award-winning eco architect, who granted Aleš a lot of tenders, helped pay their mortgage, even if his houses all looked like shoeboxes.

  ‘Bet they’re bloody vegans,’ Mo shuddered.

  ‘Excellent SMC choice, Bridge,’ Petra clicked approvingly. ‘Think young Mel Gibson, ladies.’

  ‘Ew!’ Bridge recoiled. ‘Put me off him, why don’t you?’

  ‘Young. Mad Max era but without the mullet. Heartbreakingly sexy eyes. Builds bespoke aircraft.’

  ‘How d’you know that?’ she asked jealously.

  ‘We met them at Rowles’s drinks party.’

  Bridge scowled. Petra somehow always managed to be Prima Bag: hers was the biggest house and family (albeit with a barely-there marriage); she was a social butterfly who walked dogs with aristocratic stud owner, Ronnie Percy, and flirted with the local farming heartthrob (even if Petra wanted to sack Bay Austen as her SMC, he remained the sexiest man in the village); she was excitingly careered up (even if she grumbled that her books were no longer stocked in Tesco), and she looked like Nigella, albeit in her curvier days. Now she’d staked out the Well Cottage hunk.

  ‘If he’s into planes, then he’s more Harrison Ford than
Mel,’ Gill suggested eagerly.

  ‘Harrison’s always been crumbly,’ Petra countered. ‘Well, Cottage Man is not crumbly.’

  ‘Mel’s a Wensleydale of crumbliness,’ insisted Mo. ‘Bridge deserves better.’

  Bridge tuned out of the argument. Petra was welcome to Well Cottage Man. It was all just for show, and she was happy enough to stay loyal to her original SMC and next-door neighbour, Flynn, a Lothario farrier with the flirtiest eyes in the Bardswolds, the only man in Back Lane brave enough to park in the space Aleš Mazur liked to leave his van.

  Her thoughts returned to her career, a driving force in her life, currently SORNed.

  Bridge’s ascent into office management was a subject upon which she’d always been jokingly sardonic, her vocation accidental. It was a far cry from the creative dreams she and Bernie had shared when first leaving Belfast to take up their places at the London College of Fashion, one set on being the next Orla Kiely, the other a cutting-edge make-up artist. Being a material girl had always been an important part of Bridge’s fabric, the office temping jobs she’d taken on to pay her way through her textile degree proving so profitable, it was hard to give up the money after graduating. Whereas laidback Bernie had been happy to drift artfully from party to club to unpaid work experience, wearing the longest false eyelashes in Marylebone in search of a break as a make-up artist, Bridge had always put graft before craft. And when both girls wanted to stay on in London after graduating, it was Bridge’s ‘straight’ job that earned their way. Her court shoe on the property ladder had come long before her peers’; promotions followed, her ever-fattening salary funding parties, exotic holidays, a flashy car, designer clothes. Looking back now, Bridge wished she’d stopped to enjoy the view more often.