The Country Escape (5 page)

‘He’s very tweedy and looks like
Elmer Fudd,’ she said, as she slopped boiling water over teabags. ‘But he’s definitely single.’ Dair Armitage still had a bit of a tongue-tied crush on Kat, despite the dirty-tricks campaign he’d been tasked with when the Big Five had wanted her out of the farm. As her closest neighbour – he lived in one of the estate’s lodge cottages – he popped in once in a while with gifts of freshly caught brown
trout, but their glazed eyes had seemed to look straight through her and she had no idea how to gut and cook them so she’d secretly fed them to the cats or Ché. Shy, stuttering, yet curiously pompous, Dair seemed equally frightened of Kat’s eyes and never looked into them, although he had no such qualms about staring lustfully at her chest. She’d not seen him since Russ moved in and was glad. Constance,
who had been fond of Dair, would no doubt have encouraged the match vociferously, but it was never going to happen.

But Dawn was entranced by the idea of his name. ‘You
must
have a Dair in your life, Kat. What could be more perfect for the girl who’ll do anything for a dare?’

‘I’m not quite as brave as I used to be.’

‘Trust me, living here is
well
brave.’ Dawn shuddered, taking
a slurp of her tea.

When they’d been student nurses, Kat had been notorious for her pluck. No challenge too great, no risk too frightening. Always the first to volunteer and the last to give up, she’d had a lust for life that left others breathless. At a mock awards ceremony the college put on, friends hailed Kat the ultimate mate they wanted onside in a crisis. At the time, her heart had
been set on a career in humanitarian aid work, but then she’d met Nick and her plans had changed. As Kat’s life contracted into the self-protective, imprisoned minutiae of a destructive relationship, she’d lost her natural confidence. It had started to resurface here, in her safe harbour, but it still needed a lot of buoyancy aids.

‘If we knew which of the rumours to believe, life would
be a lot easier.’ She sighed.

‘What about the solicitor’s letter on your phone?’

‘They emailed it because the postman won’t deliver anything beyond the first gate. There are owls nesting in the box there right now, so he leaves all our post at the pub for Russ to collect, and he keeps forgetting.’

‘What was
in
it, Kat?’

‘Owls, I told you.’

‘I meant the letter!’

‘Oh, I haven’t read it. It’ll just be the usual guff about access rights, or another offer to relocate the sanctuary so the farm can be sold with the estate.’

Dawn groaned. Kat had an aversion to formal paperwork, which was probably why she was living in a damp grace-and-favour fleapit while ex fiancé Nick was sitting on mounting equity in the house they’d bought together. ‘So why
can’t the sanctuary be moved somewhere else?’

‘Constance was emphatic that it had to be here at Lake Farm.’

‘What do the animals care as long as they’re looked after?’ asked Dawn, who now suspected Constance had been certifiable. The place was barely habitable. ‘Why not relocate somewhere warm and dry with a functioning letterbox, somewhere a bit nearer to a road?’

‘I’ll show
you.’ Kat whistled for the dogs.

Dawn wished she hadn’t asked as she was forced to abandon her mug of tea and climb back into the whiffy oversized wellies – she suspected they were Russ’s – to squelch outside into the rain again.

It was still coming down in sheets but Kat seemed hardly to notice as she led her out of the farmyard and across a gnarled, skeletal orchard to the oldest
oak at the edge of the woods, its girth as fat as a cooling tower’s.

Beneath its vast canopy there was a cluster of tiny headstones.

Dawn’s eyes filled with tears as she read the names – Toby, Alice, Mungo, Hetty, all with such short lives. ‘Oh, the poor little things.’

‘I know, it’s impossibly sad.’ Kat wrapped a comforting arm around her. ‘The family buried all their favourite
pets here.’

‘
Pets?
’

‘Yes. What did you think they were? Children?’

That was exactly what Dawn had imagined lying under their feet, a tragic illustration of infant mortality statistics from another era. Instead she was looking at the graves of some of the Mytton family’s favourite dogs, whose names and dates were etched in the pocked, mossy little slabs. In some cases their
likeness had been carved in limestone and marble – Benji, 1892–1904, had been a particularly roguish-looking bull terrier, while Catkin, 1907–23, was a kind-eyed whippet.

Kat patted the tiny domed head. ‘This was one of Constance’s favourite places. She’d talk about her childhood and the pets she remembered, like Catkin here. “Exquisite little thing – always looked like she’d faint if you
so much as clapped your hands, but she was as brave as a lion, rather like you, Katherine.”’

Listening to her, Dawn felt the hairs stand up on the back of her neck. Kat had always been good at impersonations – her Björk was a legend, Janet Street-Porter less so – but this was something else. The voice seemed to come from someone totally different: rich, warm and killingly upper class. It
wasn’t mockery: someone real was speaking. Any minute now Kat’s head would spin around and ectoplasm jet out. ‘I think you need a holiday,’ she said kindly, wondering how best to get her on a spa break and then back to Watford.

But Kat was gazing at Gretel, 1990–2006. ‘This little dachshund was Constance’s closest ally after she was widowed and left here alone.’ An exquisite miniature dog
had been immortalized in pure white marble. ‘Daphne is Gretel’s last surviving daughter, now almost twenty – the last of her line. She refused to get off the bed in the final hours Constance lived. She even bit the doctor. Her head was under Constance’s hand when she died.’

Dawn was unmoved. ‘Exactly how many animals do you look after here? I’m talking the ones that have a pulse.’

‘Twenty-nine if you include chickens, geese and Trevor the peacock.’

‘Christ.’ As far as Dawn was aware Kat had only ever owned one pet (Sooty, 1986–9: a guinea pig that had met an undignified end under the lawnmower). ‘I knew you always wanted a dog, but I had no idea you’d become Watford’s answer to Brigitte Bardot,’ she muttered, looking at the little headstones. ‘It’s like
Whistle Down
the
bloody
Wind
here.’

Kat’s eyes sparkled, the same vivid green as the moss on the wet tree trunks around them. ‘This is my dream gig, Dawn. I mean, how beautiful is this place? Like you say, I’ve always longed to have a dog and now I have five.’

Dawn prepared to step on a conversational landmine. ‘Didn’t Nick offer to take you to Battersea Dogs and Cats Home and get a dog once?’

The eyes went dull. ‘That was only when things got really bad between us, and he said it had to live outside the house in a kennel. I couldn’t bear that. I didn’t think it was fair.’

Dawn wondered if there was a huge difference between that and a man who forced his dog to be vegetarian, but she said nothing. Instead, she forged on through the minefield: ‘I never knew how bad things
had got with Nick, Kat. I’m so sorry. If I’d known I’d have —’

‘It’s forgotten,’ she said firmly, turning to look at the rain-pocked lake, her wet hair deepest scarlet, lashes starred with drops. She put an arm around her friend. ‘I’m just grateful you’ve forgiven me for running off like that.’

‘What’s to bloody forgive? I followed my leader. And I can’t tell you how good it feels
to be free.’

They shared a tight hug, hammered by raindrops.

There was a loud splash from the lake. Kat groaned. ‘Oh, shit. Not again.’ She belted off, leaving Dawn none the wiser.

Trailing behind, Dawn saw a huge black beast silhouetted in the lake, with devil’s horns and glinting eyes. She screamed. With a bellow, the beast tossed its head and sent up arcs of spray.

‘Ssh! Try not to frighten her,’ whispered Kat, creeping towards the bulrushes with a bucket. ‘She’s very sensitive to noise.’

‘So am I,’ Dawn squeaked, hiding behind a tree as the beast bellowed again.

Rattling a soggy bucket of nuts at Usha, Kat edged towards the rowing boat that was lying on its side nearby. She was white with fear, Dawn noticed, her teeth gritted determinedly.

‘I had to row out to get her back earlier,’ she explained in a high voice, betraying how great her terror of open water still was.

Dawn wasn’t sure Kat should float to the rescue again, especially now that their conversation had brought so many memories into high relief; nor was she keen to take the oars herself. But this time, for reasons only an ageing and increasingly forgetful
water buffalo could understand, Usha waded out of the lake of her own accord, following Kat with docile good manners back to her enclosure.

‘OMG, you’re amazing!’ Dawn followed at a safe distance, incredibly impressed. ‘That is like something out of
Crocodile Dundee
. You should star in your own reality-show documentary.’

‘Hardly. It’s basic bribery.’

‘So if I bribe you to
come back to Watford, will you?’

‘No chance. If I bribe you, will you come and live here?’

‘Only if the buffalo goes, you get under-floor heating and Dair Armitage turns out to be the man of my dreams.’

‘We’d better make the most of this weekend then.’ Kat hooked her arm through Dawn’s and headed back towards the house.

As soon as she met Russ, the vegan vigilante, Dawn sensed something potentially unpleasant cooking at Lake Farm, and it wasn’t the lentil dahl that had been left on the range too long and burned dry. It was obvious from the way he
and Kat looked at one another that they were more than part-time house-mates with a casually kinky Tantric acquaintance, and equally clear that Russ, despite his meat-free diet, was full of cock and bull.

‘The public misconception that shooting game birds isn’t animal cruelty because we can eat them is just wrong.’ Russ clearly loved the sound of his own voice, which was admittedly deep
and honeyed with West Country sweetness, but nonetheless monotonous after the third tirade on the monstrous waste of raising game to shoot, then bulldozing the carcasses into the ground. ‘Dair Armitage runs a pheasant concentration camp here. No more than that.’

‘He sounds a great character from what Kat’s told me,’ Dawn said cheerfully. ‘No disrespect, but I could murder some roast pheasant
right now.’ Her stomach gave a supportive rumble.

Kat shot her a pained look from the kitchen, where she was scraping smouldering dahl off the range, and Dawn felt a stab of guilt. She knew she should make more effort with Russ, however annoyed she was that their girls-only get-together had been hijacked by someone who looked like a Led Zeppelin throwback, lectured her non-stop, refilled
his own glass without offering the bottle around and didn’t lift a finger to help Kat.

Having finally got the fire going by applying a blowtorch, then feeding it and the range constant logs, Kat had succeeded in warming the Lake Farm kitchen-cum-sitting-room from damp sub-zero to moist single figures, occasionally dashing outside to collect more logs and check animals, cheerfully dipping
in and out of the conversation and trying to steer Russ away from his more extreme monologues on animal cruelty. It was no wonder she’d burned supper. Dawn’s ineffectual attempts to help had thus far put out the fire once, flattened two dogs underfoot and spilled rice all over the kitchen floor. Kat had banished her friend to a damp chair, where she was now weighed down by snoring terriers and listening
to Russ, thrusting her empty glass at him hopefully.

‘The pheasant murdering finished a fortnight ago,’ he was saying. ‘But they’re still massacring deer, if you’re a fan of wild venison, Dawn. They pick off the females because they’re the population drivers, always aiming behind a front leg to get the major organs, although it usually takes two or more bullets to get the fatal shot. Even
then they can take an hour to die.’

‘That is really awful.’ Dawn was genuinely appalled and wished he hadn’t told her that.

‘All meat is murder, Dawn. There’s an animal’s death in every mouthful you eat.’

He was obviously very intelligent, occasionally surprisingly funny, vaguely sexy in a grubby, hippie Russell Brand sort of a way, but Dawn didn’t understand what Kat saw
in him. It wasn’t that Russ was ugly – far from it – but he possessed a face in which what should have been handsome features appeared in the wrong places. It was as though a child had taken a Mr Potato Head and crammed on Brad Pitt and Pierce Brosnan’s best bits in random order – the dark eyes were too close together, the vulpine nose too high and the full-lipped mouth off to one side. The white-tipped
hair was weird. She thought he was opinionated and not a patch on Nick, the hard-working charmer with the heroic job and perfect manners.

Since he’d arrived, he’d done nothing but expound his strong political beliefs from the confines of the one dry, comfortable armchair in the house, which he’d cranked as close as he could to warm his feet at the fire, now blocking the heat from the rest
of the room while a noxious odour infused it.

In turn, it was clear that Russ thought Dawn was shallow and whingeing, believing that her obsession with the body beautiful was a sign of self-absorption. She also suspected that he saw her role as silent witness to Kat’s history as a threat. After all, Dawn had known Nick. She’d stood by and let things get so bad that Kat had been forced to
run here. For Kat’s sake, Dawn decided to make an effort and include Russ in the warm spill of her friendship. ‘As the curry’s a bit burned, why don’t I treat us all to an Indian takeaway? There’ll be veggie options for you, Russ, and I know Kat loves a hot one – remember the Phall-lick from Balti Towers on the high street, hon? You still hold the Watford Pussy Posse record.’

‘Tania’s hen
night,’ Kat remembered. ‘I was on the loo for a week.’

‘Worth it to fit in that size eight dress from the Karen Millen sale.’ Dawn got up, spilling elderly terriers, and wandered into the corner that was draped with saris. ‘Have you got any takeaway menus?’

‘If you can find one that’ll deliver around here I’ll eat my foot,’ Russ muttered.

‘Surely, as a vegan, you don’t eat
cheese,’ Dawn said brightly, then realized her humour was getting too sharp, picked up a feather fan and started an Indian dance.

Now holding the kitchen door open for Daphne, who was taking her third rain-sodden pee break in an hour, Kat was uncomfortably aware that her two closest allies loathed each other on sight. Russ wore the calculating look he adopted when lined up in the pub with
the village ‘earthmen’, the Brom and Lem Hunt foot followers who enjoyed baiting him, just as he relished outwitting them in return. Dawn’s face bore the cheery, professional I-take-no-shit expression she’d reserved for dealing with quarrelsome elderly patients when she was still nursing. It was her own fault for suggesting Russ join them for supper, Kat thought. He’d offered to give her some space,
but she’d really wanted them to meet, never imagining there’d be such instant antipathy.

‘Tell you what, let’s call a cab and I’ll treat us to a night out in Hereford,’ Dawn suggested, eager to find bright lights and busy bars full of strangers.

‘We have no phone,’ he reminded her, his voice developing a devilish edge. ‘There’s no way to contact the outside world in this little backwater.’

‘Can’t you use your walkie-talkie in the tree-house?’

‘I have a better idea.’ His dark eyes flashed as he looked at Kat. ‘Why don’t we take Dawn into our arms tonight?’

Dawn let out an amused snort, but her eyes darted nervously towards her friend for reassurance. It was obvious Kat found Russ seriously sexy, but this was way beyond their friendship boundaries. ‘This is a joke,
right?’

Kat laughed. ‘He’s talking about the Eardisford Arms, our local pub,’ she explained to Dawn, grateful for the suggestion. She was sure they would get on in a more relaxed atmosphere with a roaring fire and some rocket fuel in their bellies. ‘It serves a mean T-bone, and the scrumpy’s fantastic. We don’t have to worry about drinking and driving because the roads are private all the
way there. Let’s get rat-arsed.’

Dawn cheered. ‘I’ll just get changed. Give me five.’

‘It’s not really a dress-up sort of a…’ Kat’s words trailed away as her friend shot up the stairs two at a time, heading joyfully for the Topshop dress, ‘… place.’

For all his boring lectures, Russ was very generous at buying rounds, Dawn conceded, as she lifted her third pint of
scrumpy to her lips. In fact, her opinion of him was rapidly changing in the light of his behaviour in the busy little pub. He’d been keeping the friends regularly supplied with drinks and bar snacks in their quiet corner of the snug, crouching at the table for a quick chat each time he returned to them, then drifting back to talk to his cronies at the bar where he’d left his drink. It was clearly
a position he took up regularly – Dawn suspected that Russ’s orchard arboriculture work involved a lot of testing the end product – but with an end product this magical, she could hardly blame him.

‘Dave would bloody love it here.’ Dawn gazed around mistily, largely because the turquoise lenses made her eyes smart.

‘Do you miss him?’

‘I miss what we had at the very beginning.
I want that with somebody else.’

The scrumpy was filling Dawn with the glow of goodwill and Cupid’s arrows. It was Valentine’s Day tomorrow and she suddenly longed for new love. Kat had warned her to go easy on the local brew, which had a lethal reputation, but it held no fears for Dawn, who had won bets based on being able to drink her way through the cruise ship’s entire cocktail menu
before performing ‘
Non, Je Ne Regrette Rien
’.

The Eardisford Arms was tiny and old-fashioned, perched on the bank of the river by the bridge that divided Upper from Lower, its half-timbered walls decked with hunting prints and horse brasses. The small public bar was packed with locals, all agog to know who Dawn was, and satisfyingly appreciative of her Topshop dress and turquoise eyes.
One of the better-looking men had been staring at her in open-mouthed admiration from the moment she arrived.

‘Calum the Talon,’ Kat told her, in an undertone. ‘He’s a falconer. He handles the hunt’s eagle owl for them.’

‘Should I swing a piece of meat around on a string to beckon him over?’

‘His girlfriend’s the one with the pink hair serving behind the bar, so don’t encourage
him. The last time there was a fight in here, she knocked someone unconscious.’

Dawn studied the small, stocky Tank Girl lookalike, who was laughing with Russ as she loaded the dishwasher, reaching out a tattooed hand to ruffle his white-tipped hair affectionately. Her square face was so heavily disguised with piercings and eyeliner it was hard to tell her age, but she guessed she was about
forty.

‘She a relative?’ She knew Russ had family in the village.

‘No, but they’ve known each other since they were kids – she used to babysit for the Hedges family,’ Kat explained. ‘That’s Mags.’

‘
That
’s Mags?’ Dawn remembered the mention of the old friend who hung around at Lake Farm. ‘The one with the band?’ She’d somehow imagined a cross between Courtney Love and Gwen
Stefani, not Peppa Pig with piercings. On closer inspection, Dawn realized she was the sort of earthy, buxomly extrovert woman who probably looked fantastic in full rock chick regalia rasping out ballads in a smoky spotlight.

‘They’ve just formed a new line-up,’ Kat said proudly. ‘It was called Dirty Mags, but they’ve decided to change it to broaden its appeal. Russ wants them to call it
Animal Magnetism to help raise money for the sanctuary. Mags is onside – she helped organize an open day for us last year, although it was mostly hairy bikers and music fans who turned up and there was a bit of a fight there too.’

‘Don’t tell me she broke that up as well?’

‘She started it, actually.’

They watched as Mags pretended to swing a punch at Russ, cackling loudly.
Heavily tattooed and wearing more chunky jewellery than Mr T, she possessed a dirtier laugh than Sid James. ‘I know she looks scary, but she’s soppy about animals,’ Kat insisted. ‘She cried so much when we watched
War Horse
on DVD that her one of nose piercings blew out. Calum’s birds of prey are her babies. Nobody messes with Mags, so it’s great she looks out for Russ and me. She’s like a big
sister to him.

‘Bill Hedges, Russ’s uncle, almost gave up on him as a teenager – he was always in trouble when he came here for summer holidays – but Mags helped smooth things over.’

‘I thought he grew up in the village.’

Kat shook her head. ‘His mum did – Bill’s younger sister Gloria – but she ran off with one of the fruit pickers. They’re all from Eastern Europe now, but
back then they were mostly university students on summer vacation.’

At sixteen Gloria, a day-dreaming good-time girl, had fallen for wild-haired, cricket-mad politics student Paul. At the end of the summer break, they had moved into his student digs in Bristol together, and six months later she’d discovered she was pregnant. Paul was determined to do the right thing, which delighted Gloria,
who found herself marrying into his wealthy Hereford brewing family, only to have her dreams shattered when he turned his back on the family fortune to become a maths teacher and lay preacher in one of Bristol’s toughest suburbs, devoting himself to God and the Labour movement. To her family’s surprise, Gloria embraced city life and trained as a teaching assistant, supporting her husband in all
he did. The couple became key members of their teaching union, church and human rights campaigns.

‘Have you met them?’ asked Dawn, thinking they sounded incredibly heavy-going. No wonder Russ was such a moral crusader.

She shook her head. ‘They run a mission school in Africa now and have adopted several children out there. They don’t get back to England often.’

‘Tough on Russ.’

‘He thinks it’s great now – he always had this place. It’s been his second home. I think he had a lot of issues with his parents when he was young – that’s why he took the name Hedges – but he’s dealt with them now.’

As a child, Russ had sometimes joined his parents at religious retreats, trade-union conferences and on third-world volunteer work, but he’d always preferred spending
the school breaks with the Hedges family in rural Herefordshire, where he could enjoy the space, freedom and wildlife, and was treated as the son they’d never had. Although Russ shared his father’s passionate dislike of blood sports and outspoken opinions on redistribution of wealth, clashing regularly with his intransigent, terrier-loving uncle on the subject, he adored Bill’s positive outlook and
the country wisdom he passed on.

‘His political beliefs drove him to try to take on the hunt single-handed – that was when he got into trouble as a teenager, spraying ALF slogans everywhere and sabbing, although he was nothing to do with the official antis then. They always focused on hunts closer to the cities, so the Brom and Lem had never had much trouble until Russ arrived with his
aniseed spray. You can imagine how embarrassing it was for Bill, who’s been a life-long hunt supporter. So Mags helped out – she got Russ interested in Compassion in World Farming, plus the music. She taught him to play the guitar. And Bill gave him more work to do round the farm, which he loved. Russ always wants to learn about new things.’ His greatest love remained the cider orchards, which the
Hedges family had tended for two centuries, where he had set up camps as a boy and dreamed of a simpler life away from cityscapes. Hence his interest in arboriculture, which he had studied at university.