The Country Escape (28 page)

The Eardisford village show traditionally took place on a stretch of paddock land between the church and the Hedges’ orchards. It was known locally as God’s Plot because a succession of cash-strapped vicars had tried and failed to
persuade the diocese to sell it off for development. Despite being lovingly tended and mown by parishioners, it was a notorious mole playground and this year was no exception, the marquees, stalls and rings set up on turf so pockmarked with red mounds it seemed even the moles had been popping their heads up all week in hope of encountering the village’s new star resident.

When Dougie Everett
officially opened the proceedings to a small crowd in bright sunshine, his Hollywood glamour attracted a host of local press, including a television camera from the regional BBC news programme. Dressed in leg-hugging faded red trousers and a bright blue shirt that brought out the colour of his eyes, collar turned up as always, he was utterly charming, giving nothing away about his new role while
enthusing about Eardisford.

‘Smarmy show-off.’ Russ was unimpressed, wasting no time in earmarking the reporter from the
Brombury Gazette
to make sure he included a mention of Animal Magnetism, who were playing a special version of ‘Here Comes The Summer’ while the local jazz band took their lunch break before the maypole dancing.

With Miriam and Frank on the gate, flirting with
everyone, most especially each other, and jolly Bill Hedges on the PA, visitors were welcomed to a riot of double-entendres and bonhomie, enjoying a rare day of unbroken bank-holiday sunshine. Pale flesh and new flip-flops were out in force as the village raided its summer wardrobes and towed freshly bathed family faithfuls along for the novelty dog show. Alongside the tombola, bric-à-brac, refreshment
tent, bookstall and plate smashing, a long stretch of God’s Plot had been roped off for the children’s pony show, starting with paid rides.

Incredibly grumpy at being shampooed and wheeled out in the heat, manes and tails threaded with ribbons, the Lake Farm Shetlands were dragging their feet around one small circle, led by the Hedges girls in the tightest hot-pants imaginable. Meanwhile
Gut, the Indian groom, and the girls from the livery yard were putting out bending poles and taking ringside entries for the races, which had attracted a host of smalls on Thelwellian ponies. There were more glamorous high-heeled ring stewards, rosette-holders and judges than there were at the Horse of the Year Show. Having casually mentioned in the pub that he might need some volunteers to help
with the pony show, Dougie had been so overwhelmed with offers that he didn’t need to do anything, apart from take the credit.

On the PA, Bill Hedges was profuse in his praise: ‘We’re very lucky, ladies and gentlemen, to have a Hollywood actor and stuntman with us here today. The multi-talented Dougie Everett has been working tirelessly backstage as well as front, a true ambassador for
the Eardisford Estate’s new team. I hope you’ll all extend a warm welcome to him.’ There was a smattering of applause around the field, and a riotous cheer from the pony ring where Dougie’s female fans were lovingly running events. ‘The novelty dog show is about to take place in the main ring, so please have your four-legged friends ready for our expert judge Miss Katherine Mason from the Constance
Mytton-Gough Animal Sanctuary, one of the many good causes for which we are raising funds here today. Class One is the Dog with the Waggiest Tail.’

Kat braced herself before entering the ring. Having agreed to judge the contest because she’d been assured it was a doddle compared to the political hotbed that was the children’s mounted fancy dress, she found herself facing a far bigger quandary.

Dougie Everett was first in line for the judge to admire. Quiver’s tail might be small, but it rotated as fast as a strimmer wire when she approached. She didn’t look Dougie in the eye, eager to protect her vital organs from sudden movement, and to remain impartial.

‘What a handsome chap,’ she said, wondering why she suddenly sounded like the Queen.

‘So everyone says.’ His
voice, by contrast, was honeyed with warmth. ‘The dog’s rather cute too.’

Quiver wagged his tail even faster, whole body wobbling in his determination to win his master a few rosettes as reward for all his efforts. Beside him, equally determined but rather less suited to the task, Dair Armitage’s German pointers cowered at heel, tails firmly rammed between their legs while he glowered sideways
at Dougie from under his flat cap. Miriam, meanwhile, had abandoned the gate and was on Dougie’s other side, makeup freshly reapplied and tummy held in as she showed off her overweight retriever, whose plumed tail wafted around like a punkah-wallah’s fan. Further adrift, Babs Hedges held a snarling terrier, two earthmen had even more snarly terriers, and Mags escorted Ché, who only wagged
his tail if he smelt sausages.

Eager to avoid any accusations of favouritism, Kat awarded the prize to a small child she didn’t recognize with a flag-waving beagle, only to discover the boy was one of show chairman Frank’s grandchildren and the whole thing looked like a fix. She was similarly blighted by the Prettiest Bitch, Most Handsome Dog and Best Veteran, all of which she tried to
award to people she didn’t know, only to discover they were closely related to those she did. By the final class Dougie, who was clearly a very bad loser, was looking increasingly peeved. It was the Dog the Judge Would Most Like to Take Home, and as Kat stooped to the Patterdale puppy again, he whispered, ‘If Quiver wins, will you take me home too?’

‘Depends if you’re house-trained.’ She
smiled as the little dog tipped straight over and offered her a very pink stomach to tickle.

‘We won’t steal food, but we’ll both lie on your sofas and try to get into your bed.’

She looked up and instantly regretted it. She was no match for those teasing blue eyes, determined to persuade her that she did want to take him home very much indeed. His bewitching smile hadn’t diminished
while he’d been galloping around the estate and charming every local. Neither had Kat’s involuntary reaction to it. Her organs were circuit-training down there. She retaliated with the big guns, smiling him down.

Kat had been going to make Quiver the winner because he was by far the sweetest dog in the class, but she didn’t want to give Dougie anything that could be construed as encouragement,
so instead she awarded the prize to Miriam’s ever-smiling retriever. As she guiltily clipped the second-place rosette on Quiver’s collar with a royal ‘Jolly well done!’ she didn’t look at Dougie, hurrying to distribute the other rosettes before belting out of the ring.

‘Well, what a superb show of top-class bitches and underdogs that was!’ Bill Hedges was on his third cider punch as he
resumed his commentary on the PA system. ‘Please all give a huge round of applause to the contestants and to our lovely judge, Kat Mason, who works so tirelessly for them poor old animals. I’ve just been told that there will be a special masked movie night showing of
Gone With the Wind
in the village hall in aid of the sanctuary next month, with a prize for the best Scarlett and Rhett fancy dress,
and a mint julep bar running all evening. There’s an early-bird ticket offer today, so hurry before they get all the worms.’

‘Who sanctioned this?’ Miriam squawked, still in the ring with the retriever. ‘It sounds perfectly dreadful. What’s wrong with the film
TBC
?’ She looked accusingly at Kat, who held out her arms helplessly. It was impossible to control Cyn and Pru’s enthusiasm now
they’d fixed upon the idea.

‘We knew you’d love it as much as us,’ Pru said staunchly, when Miriam rounded on her. ‘Constance would definitely approve.’

‘She’d be horrified. She refused to watch anything Vivien Leigh was ever in. Said the daughter of a British cavalry officer in India should be less flighty.’

But the sisters would not be deflected. Not only was Cyn sporting
an ancient ball dress to promote the fund-raising movie masquerade, but they also intended to hijack the veteran horse procession to add to the publicity. ‘Pru’s brought her old side-saddle and we thought we’d pop Kat up on that with a mask and a frock,’ she told Miriam eagerly. ‘She’ll look ravishing. Dougie’s jolly handsome, isn’t he?’

‘Looks just as sinful and swashbuckling as his father.’
Miriam’s mascara-heavy eyelashes narrowed together, not fooled by the charm – she’d had her fingers burned with Vaughan. But she couldn’t help admiring Dougie’s beauty as he sauntered past now to put his little Patterdale in the back of a muddy Land Rover and fetch out a longbow.

Gathering up her skirts, Cyn hopped after him, eager to find out whether he’d got the estate’s go-ahead for
the cricket match. ‘I always do the roster of ladies volunteering to help with lunches and teas, you see, and today is such a good opportunity to find out who’s available. Bill’s been mowing the field in his own time and tending the wickets. Nobody plays on it now, so he says it’s a bit green-top but should be perfect for fast bowling by late summer.’

‘Just how I like it.’ He was pulling
more archery equipment from his boot. He turned back to her and smiled easily. ‘Faster the better, don’t you agree?’

Such was the impact of Dougie Everett’s smile – those white teeth, the dirty blond mane tickling the long dark lashes that laced together around bluer-than-the-Indian-Ocean eyes – that Cyn quite lost her thread, which happened rather a lot these days. She looked down, screwing
up her forehead in concentration. What was it? Something to do with fast balls and Scarlett O’Hara?

‘I hope you’re coming to the masked movie night!’ She remembered at last. ‘There’s a fancy-dress prize. Perhaps you can judge it for us. I’m going to make Kat take part. She’s such a pretty girl, but really has no idea, and she works so hard with so little thanks. It would be lovely for her
to get something back.’ She gave him a conspiratorial wink, not realizing she was trying to rig a competition to favour the woman who had just overlooked Dougie’s adorable puppy in the dog show.

He smiled wider than ever, making Cyn feel positively faint. ‘Of course I’ll do it.’

‘Oh, how wonderful!’ She gathered her skirts and skipped away.

Bill was coughing importantly into
the PA again. ‘Starting in the main ring now we have an archery display by the world-famous Hollywood actor and stuntman Dougie Everett.’

‘If your uncle says “the Hollywood actor and stuntman” one more time I’ll strangle him with his microphone flex,’ muttered Kat, who had joined Russ at the ringside. She wished he wasn’t wearing his badger outfit again. It smelt seriously bad.

‘I don’t think “Hollywood twat and equerry” means a lot to folk round here.’ Russ put a big badger arm around her shoulders, almost gassing her.

They watched as Dougie sauntered into the ring with a bow under his arm and that devastating smile on his lips. Over the speakers, the music was a thundering, fast-moving bass beat that got the crowd clapping.

Archery, unless mounted,
was a pretty static pursuit. Having been banned from using incendiaries of any sort by the committee on health-and-safety grounds, Dougie didn’t even have his show-stopping flaming arrows to fall back on, but he was a born performer. Joking and interacting with the crowd all the while, he fired off arrows into the row of targets set up with ever-smaller balloons, each exploding with clouds of
glitter and streamers. The kids loved it. He shot a huge dragon made from green and red balloons, which his army of volunteers had spent hours lovingly blowing up. He went on to shoot a watermelon, an egg, water bombs and a row of plates blagged from the white-elephant stall. Dougie then did a comedy version of shooting one arrow through another, the first arrow being as fat as a cigar, but no less
highly skilled for the slapstick entertainment that left the crowd in stitches, roaring their approval.

Russ, secretly enthralled, pretended to be unimpressed as Dougie swapped the longbow for a lightweight horseman’s bow and threw apples up in the air, shooting them before they came down.

‘What if he misses? I calculate the trajectory of those arrows would take them straight into
the tombola.’

‘Somehow I don’t think he misses.’ Kat was astonished at the skill on display. ‘And the arrows are tiny – look.’

When Dougie called for a volunteer to take the apple on their head for his grand finale, he ignored the eager hands shooting up among his many female fans and homed in on Kat, the Everett Effect smile on speed ten. She smiled straight back, engaging in combat,
knowing this was revenge for the dog show.

‘Don’t do it, Kat,’ hissed Russ, arm tightening around her.

‘I’m not about to let him point a lethal weapon at me.’ She spoke through the smile.

Dougie was walking towards her now, charm on his lips, retribution in his eyes. ‘Will you join me, Kat?’

Russ pulled her towards him. ‘You’ll notice her arm isn’t up.’

‘That’s
because she has a six-foot badger holding it down,’ he pointed out. ‘Shall we let Kat decide?’ Leaning over the ropes he breathed so only she could hear, ‘Dare you.’

Kat started. Those two words were her red rag.

Before she could reply, a figure leaped into the ring nearby. ‘I’ll do it!’

It was Mags, in her sexy fox ensemble. Having battled to get Dougie to notice her since
his arrival, she had spotted the perfect opportunity.

Letting Kat go so fast she spun round like a top, Russ ran to her. ‘I won’t let you, Mags! Besides, Kat’s doing it now.’

Kat wasn’t listening. She was looking at Dougie and he was looking at her. The smile-off had dropped away. Her vital organs were staging a serious punch-up.

Bill, who had been keeping up an overexcited,
cider-fuelled commentary throughout, was beside himself: ‘Kat Mason, ladies and gentlemen!’ He forgot to switch off his mic as he asked someone nearby, ‘Are we insured for this?’

Standing two feet in front of the straw target boss with an apple on her head, Kat stared unblinking at Dougie as he eyed her along the arrow, one blue eye closed, the other utterly focused.

Her mind whirred. You’re letting
him shoot at you. Are you
mad
?

He dared me, the voice in her head reminded her, a familiar voice that had been silent for years. It was joined by Constance’s laughter-laced encouragement:
Atta girl. You show him!

The blue eye winked.

The bow released.

Thwwwwaaaa
—
 

The apple flew from Kat’s head before she realized it was gone.

Steeling herself – because
she thought she might faint, and she didn’t want Dougie Everett to guess how frightened she’d been – Kat winked back.

‘Ladies and gentlemen, I give you the
legendary
Hollywood actor and stuntman,
Dougie
Everett!’ Bill cheered over the PA.

The crowd shrieked and clapped.

Smile back in place, brighter than ever, Dougie strode forwards and clapped Kat, calling for more applause
as he took her hand and raised it. Matching his smile and acknowledging the crowd, Kat bowed before pulling her hand away and indicating for them to clap Dougie instead. Then, looking down, she saw that the arrow he’d used had a foam head.

‘They’re used in archery tag – it’s like paintball.’ He gave the crowd a bow, glancing across at her. ‘At worst it’s like being hit by a softball, but
I knew I wouldn’t miss. Don’t knock it. You look good. They all think it was a real arrow.’

‘You don’t have to make me look good.’ She smarted, her bravery undermined.

‘Nobody can make someone as beautiful as you look any better,’ he said, straightening so that his face was inches away from hers, the eyes back to their default, full-frontal flirt, as instinctively appealing as Quiver
offering his belly. But there was a spark of something new in them that Kat recognized with delight: respect.

In the crowd, simmering with resentment because the archery display had bumped his falconry show off the bill, Calum the Talon was not impressed: ‘Do that again with a galloping horse and I’ll buy you a drink!’

The earthmen and some of the other Brom and Lem faithfuls hear-heared
around him.

Dougie’s face was very still, and Kat saw pain move across it like a cloud before the sun came out with his entertainer’s smile. ‘I haven’t got any trained horses any more.’

‘A Shetland can take an adult!’ Calum goaded, pointing towards the pony rides where the sanctuary’s Thelwellian duo were short on customers, the entire crowd focused on the archer.

‘Okay! Bring
one over here!’ Dougie laughed, then whispered to Kat, ‘Don’t go away.’

Kat was pretty gutsy if given a challenge, but the thought of Dougie shooting arrows at her – even foam-tipped ones – while careering around on one of the sanctuary’s ancient, evil Shetlands was alarming.

‘I really should be getting changed for the procession soon,’ she said wimpily.

The larger of the
pair was brought to the main ring, radiating ill temper after a long morning trawling around with small children on his back.

Bill was having a terrific time: ‘Ladies and gentlemen, the Hollywood actor and stuntman Dougie Everett is giving us a fine display of bowmanship, I think you’ll agree, and he is now going to show off his horsemanship with the aid of our own lovely Kat Mason!’

To amuse the crowd, Dougie put Kat on the Shetland first and insisted they trot around him while she held an apple on her head. Much to Kat’s humiliation, the pony had to stay on the lead rein and one of Dougie’s eager volunteers towed him along. Her toes trailed the ground as she bumped along, apple bobbing. It was like sitting on a moving washing-machine during a badly loaded spin cycle.

‘Hold it still!’ he ordered.

Thwwwwaaaa
—

The apple was gone.

Kat burst out laughing, climbing off and hugging the little pony, which got the apple as a reward. She looked up as Dougie put his bow under his arm and clapped her again, the flirtation in those blue eyes now even more diluted by respect.

‘Put your hands together, ladies and gentlemen!’ called Bill,
now so pissed and enthralled he forgot to switch his mic off again as he added, ‘Fuck me sideways, this is good.’

The crowd roared for more, stoked by Calum, knowing that the best trick was yet to come.

Dougie flexed the wooden curve of his horseman’s bow across his knee and hooked the string tighter in the one grooved end to increase the tension. Then, indicating for Kat to stand
in the centre of the ring with another apple, he swung a leg over the Shetland, nodded for the lead rope to be unclipped, and was off.

The sight of him careering around with no steering, the pony’s ears now pricked as he was given his head and bucked for fun, had the crowd hooting and clapping long before the apple flew from Kat’s head. In truth, none of the arrows he shot got close. Realizing
that Dougie was far too out of control to take aim and was deliberately shooting wide, Kat waited for an arrow to fly past and flicked her head back, sending another apple on its way.

Taking Kat’s hand to share a final bow, Dougie squeezed it tight. ‘I owe you one.’

‘I made us both look good.’

‘We make a good-looking couple then.’ His fingers laced through hers as he held
up her hand, bowing again. Kat felt that hand buzz with sparks, which threaded into her arm and the rest of her body in a carnival conga.

On the PA, Bill was now fighting hard not to slur his words: ‘… proshession of veteran horses in five minutes and then the gymkhana will begin in the pony ring with the maypole dancing shtarting in the main ring at exactly two.’

‘Oh, Christ, I
have to get Sri ready.’ Kat pulled her hand away from his and rushed off to the horsebox, grateful for the escape as the conga threatened to spiral out of control.

Cyn’s ball dress, which Kat had been crammed into in a tearing hurry, was a hideous coral pink 1960s number and far too tight. Sri certainly looked horrified when Kat rustled towards her, bright red in the face from
all the corset-string-heaving, her breathing shallow and painful.

‘I had a hand-span waist as a gel,’ Cyn said wistfully, as she and Pru helped her up into the unfamiliar saddle, guiding her right leg around the leaping horn before arranging her skirt so that it covered her legs and feet. ‘Sri knows all about side-saddles – she was trained to take one so that Constance could be mounted
at the Brom and Lem Hunt’s bicentennial meet; must have been eighty-eight or -nine by then. Such an amazing horsewoman. You’d make her very proud today.’

‘Shouldn’t I be wearing a hard hat?’ Kat asked nervously, as Sri skittered sideways.

‘Nonsense.’ Pru reached down to haul up the girth. ‘Impossible to fall out of a side-saddle. I hunted in a bowler. Never took a tumble.’

‘Besides, I brought you a mask and Mummy’s tiara to wear,’ said Cyn, groping in a plastic bag for them. ‘It goes so beautifully with the dress. I wore it when I came out, as did Pru. We were quite the talk of the town.’

Hanging on tightly to the reins as Sri snatched at the bit, Kat wondered if the elderly spinsters were Eardisford’s incestuous Sapphic secret, but then Cyn added, ‘Of course,
we were both debutantes in the days one was presented to the Queen. Nowadays one’s presented on
Made in Chelsea
. Lean down.’

Doing as she was told, Kat found herself wearing a Venetian mask with a huge nose and a remarkably heavy jewelled tiara.

Before she could straighten up, Sri shot off, crabbing sideways again, determined to show that she barely qualified as veteran: she was,
after all, in her early teens. By comparison, the other Lake Farm oldies shuffled along in the sun like Chelsea pensioners at Trooping the Colour, led in hand by Cyn, Pru and a small clutch of pony-mad teenage volunteers, and followed by a host of local equine pensioners brought along for the occasion by their owners.

Wrapping the reins twice around her hands before bracing them together
and grabbing a hunk of mane, Kat clung on with all her strength to stop the mare tanking off. As she tried to accustom herself to sitting with one leg wrapped around a fixed head pommel, she found the tiara slipping over her eyes, like a pair of dark glasses, pushing the mask over her nose and mouth, but her hands were full so she couldn’t reach up to shift it back. She shook her head, but that
just dropped the tiara even lower on to her nose, and now she couldn’t see a thing.

Watching from the sidelines, Quiver furiously attacking his boot toes, Dougie snorted in amusement at Kat’s ridiculous sparkly spectacles – she looked like Dame Edna. Then he realized they were blinding her.

Further back in the procession and equally blind, the sanctuary’s ex racehorse Sid
was happily following the familiar big, grey rump of his ancient field-mate as he was led along by Pru. When she stopped to chat to a WI friend, ignoring the old horse’s desperate attempts to drag her along in his wake, she had no idea that she was effectively taking away Sid’s white stick. Losing sense of his friend’s whereabouts entirely, he panicked and plunged into the bric-à-brac. Meanwhile,
the smaller Shetland had towed his teenage handler to the cake stall, where he was laying claim to a Victoria sponge. Not to be outdone, and maddened by flies, his bigger sidekick led a stampede to the Pimms tent. Oblivious to it all, tiara over her eyes, Kat sat out a few skittish bucks from Sri as she led the march across God’s Plot, those curling ears so tightly pricked that the tips were overlapping.

In the wide tented pagoda where a sound stage had been set up for the bands, a smoky, screeching wail came through the speakers, so loud that two nearby toddlers burst into tears and Quiver dived behind Dougie’s legs.

Sri shot forwards, then went rapidly into reverse and up on her hind legs as instinct had taught her, tall and fierce against the predators doing a soundcheck, front
hoofs paddling. Unaccustomed to the extra weight of the old side-saddle on her back and the rider tipping badly to one side, the mare reared up beyond her balance point.

‘Oh, shit, she’s going over backwards!’

Dougie leaped into action. Taking a running jump, he launched himself across the mare’s withers, tipping her back to the ground. She jinked sideways in a messy stagger then
found her feet in a splay-legged landing, just as another feedback screech echoed from the pagoda speakers and Mags rasped into the microphone, ‘You all right, Kat love?’

That was too much for Sri. With Dougie still lying across her neck, she spun around and headed fast for the nearest exit, almost wrenching Kat’s arms from their sockets.

A chorus of alarm went up as yet more veteran
horses charged off in all directions, apart from the lame old Lake Farm hunter: he dropped his head to eat the grass beneath him.

‘Whoa, Sri!’ Kat screeched. Wherever they were headed, it couldn’t be good.

Dougie had a better view, but agreed it wasn’t good. They were fast approaching the gateway that led from God’s Plot to the church graveyard, a small kissing gate facing straight
on to the Mytton mausoleum and private plot.

‘Try pulling the reins,’ he suggested, assessing the narrow gateway and realizing he wouldn’t fit through it in his current dead-stag position.

‘You’re lying across my hands,’ she pointed out, surprisingly calmly. ‘So either hop off the bus or take over the steering wheel.’

Dougie steered, rather too quickly. He was accustomed to
riding horses in every conceivable daredevil stance, so scrambling into the driving seat, leaning down to grab the reins and apply the brakes was no great challenge, but it took both Sri and Kat by surprise. One stopped dead. The other kept going, taking Dougie with her.

Kat landed front down in a bank of long, spongy grass, grateful for the soft cushion. She lifted her head and saw Sri
standing to her left – the mare was looking down at her with a benign what-are-you-doing-down-there? expression – and Dougie lying to her right, his blue eyes less benign because in the long grass he’d landed on there was a hard mound of mole-hill.

‘I thought it was virtually impossible to fall off a side-saddle?’ she said breathlessly.

‘Depends whose side you’re on.’