The Country Escape (53 page)

Dollar stepped closer and growled: ‘If Mrs Singh has been forced to avail herself of a plastic cup, that five minutes may have cost you
your life.’ She stalked off.

‘Is she always like that?’ Dawn asked Dair, amazed.

‘More or less.’

Lined up on the terrace, Bollywood dancers gyrating around them, guests peered out across the dusk-flooded park. Unable to stand still, Dougie paced up and down the stone balustrade by the dining room, then bounded down the stairs to the lower terrace where some of the
villagers were gathered, puffing cigarettes and demanding to know what they were supposed to be looking out for.

‘Fireworks?’ suggested Cyn, now very tipsy on champagne, sequins raining down as she leaned over the balustrade, kicking up her skirts.

Pru hauled her sister back before she fell right over. ‘Shouldn’t they wait until it’s dark?’

And then they all held their collective
breath as they saw a horse galloping along the lime avenue on the far side of the lake, its coat an unmistakable patchwork of chestnut and white.

‘Kat’s riding the Bolt!’ Miriam gasped. ‘She’s bloody well doing it!’

Kat had expected Sri to hesitate on going into the lake and was ready to give her lots of leg-kicking encouragement as Dougie had taught her. But instead she
took a huge running leap, belly-flopping in and almost losing Kat in the process. She clung on tightly as the mare splashed in a paddling, plunging canter through the shallows, sending up arcs of water, her knees high. Then she felt her drop lower beneath her, her neck stretching out and the rhythm changing as she lost her footing and began to swim.

For a moment blind panic engulfed Kat,
black water swirling around her. She wondered why she was doing this, what possible good it could do to re-enact an archaic dare just so she could give Dougie Everett his answer. Then she remembered Constance’s eyes, bright as full moons whenever she spoke of doing it, her utter faith that it had given her the extraordinary fortitude and confidence that had spirited her through life. She saw the
beautiful house in front of her and felt the amazing power of the horse beneath her, bred from a forefather that had completed the same challenge, and suddenly she knew for certain why she was doing this. She was riding a ghost home to rest: she was taking Constance home one last time.

Atta girl! Feels amazing, doesn’t it? Bloody marvellous. What a horse.
 

Sri snorted loudly as she
swam, a strange bellow-like rhythm that comforted Kat as they powered along, passing a puzzled moorhen and then looming up above the waterline again as the horse’s feet found the bottom and she started plunging in her water-splashing canter towards dry land.

‘You beauty!’ Kat hugged her neck, breathless with exhilaration and relief.

As they scrambled up the bank, she checked her
watch. She had just over a minute and a half to get to the Hereford road. There was only the climb up through the parkland to do now, but Sri was tired. They had never timed this section because it was impossible to rehearse, but Dougie had guessed two minutes. Urging Sri to go faster, Kat could see the house glowing in the gathering dusk like the mother ship, the vast marquee and the jewel-covered
awning on the terrace its sails. She could hear a strange sound, a roaring cacophony. Then she realized it was cheering.

Kicking back into a gallop, she reached into her pocket for the red scarf she’d tucked in there and pulled it out to hold up so that it trailed behind her in the wind as she charged out of the lime avenue and up to the haha. Rallying her last reserves of energy, Sri jumped
in to it in one tiger-like bound and they thundered into the gardens.

Low in the sky behind her a plane engine was roaring as it came down to land, causing the tired mare to put on a burst of panic speed so that she charged through the Italian garden rather faster than Kat had intended, sending box leaves flying and almost flattening a couple canoodling behind a high bank of lavender –
was that Russ and Mags looking up at her in shock? – and before she knew it, she was at the base of the terrace steps.

Unable to stop smiling now, she rode up them exactly as Constance had done almost eighty years previously, in through the double doors, clattering across the marble floor where guests and jingling Indian dancers had parted to form a wide path for her to trot through, some
astonished, others clapping and whooping.

The crowd began following now, running to keep up as horse and rider trotted out through the double front doors to the long chestnut-lined front drive that led to the Hereford road. Kicking back into hunt-chase pace, Kat’s ears strained for the clock’s quarter chime.

Not that she’d have a hope of hearing it once she spotted Dougie waiting
between the tall stone posts supporting the ornate cast-iron gates, each topped with a lion rampant. Kat’s heart was now crashing far too loudly to hear bells, or even Sri’s hoofs. Overwhelming pride and relief lit his face as she galloped towards him and he held out his arms, shouting something she couldn’t hear. She didn’t need to hear it to know how he felt. Kicking to go faster, fifty yards between
them, she finally understood what looking love straight in the eye really meant.

Behind her, the music boomed, the aeroplane roaring down beyond the house, but Kat barely heard more than a distant rhythm and a tinny buzz. The wave of party guests following her along the drive were cheering, a rowdy, shrieking babble, familiar village voices whooping her name, but Kat heard only her own
rasping, exhausted breaths and drumming heartbeat as she came to a halt at last, reaching up to touch one of the lions rampant and looking down to see Dougie clapping and whooping, his handsome face wreathed in smiles – was that a tear? – telling her she’d done it, she’d really bloody well done it, and she was amazing and he really bloody loved her with all his heart.

Still hardly able
to take it in, Kat slid from Sri on jelly legs and covered the mare with pats and kisses, while Dougie loosened her girth and noseband. Kat thanked her over and over again. Then she thanked Constance, out loud, for challenging her to do it, for telling her that it would be the most amazing feeling, that she would understand once she had done it, that it would set her free. ‘Thank you,’ she shouted
gleefully at the house, the lions, the sky. ‘You were right. Thank you!’

But Constance’s voice had fallen silent in her head now. She’d found her way home in style.

Dougie stepped behind her, wrapping his arms around her. ‘Hear that?’

The quarter chime was ringing out, and she let out a cry of euphoria, pressing her face against Sri’s hot neck. ‘You are beautiful. You are
more than sublime.’ She turned to Dougie, her heart so overwhelmed with emotion it felt as though it was bungee-jumping between the moon and the earth. She suddenly found she couldn’t speak.

He had no words either. Instead he kissed her, a kiss that turned her tired legs into air, her aching muscles into pure energy, her over-pumped, exhausted heart into a furnace.

When they pulled
apart, his eyes didn’t leave hers, arms tight and protective around her, foreheads pressed together and lashes tangling.

The party guests had started to catch up. One of the girl grooms from the village took Sri to walk her around to cool off. Congratulations were coming thick and fast. Mobile phones were out taking photographs, voices chattering that this was the last time the Bolt would
ever be run, that Constance would have been proud, and a few less charitable, that Dougie Everett should sling his hook right now and leave Kat alone.

Neither Kat nor Dougie heard a word.

‘I have my answer for you,’ she told him.

He blinked, his thick lashes soft against her cheek, then carried on looking so deeply into her eyes she thought he’d probably seen exactly what
she was saying before it passed her lips.

‘My answer is not yet.’

Somebody in the crowd shushed the others, the noise spreading like a hiss before it fell quiet.

His eyes danced between hers. ‘That’s a good answer.’

Kat’s voice cracked with emotion. ‘Now I have a question for you.’

‘Anything.’

‘Will you stay?’

He didn’t hesitate. ‘Yes.’

On the landing strip, Mrs Singh was the first on to the steps, lifting her sari as she stepped hurriedly down. Waiting at the bottom, an attractive girl was holding open the door of a glossy black car. She pressed her hands together reverently. ‘
Namaste
.’

Mrs Singh threw herself inside. ‘Don’t wait for the others,’ she hissed. ‘Drive!’

Dollar rushed round to the driver’s side
and leaped in, flipping the shift. They reached a bathroom within thirty seconds, a luxurious haven out of bounds to party guests, into which Mrs Singh hurried. Two minutes later, she reappeared, smiling, acknowledging the girl with a grateful nod. ‘Please now take me back to my son.’

It was a start, Dollar told herself. A small, bonding start. She could do the life-saving heroics later.

When she delivered Mrs Singh back to Seth, both women were startled to find him wearing a black sleep mask with holes cut into it like Zorro, topped with a cricket Panama. Even half covered, Seth’s worried face told Dollar that he’d momentarily believed she’d abducted his mother. But then his mouth split into its big-kid smile, and he said, ‘Mum, Dad – I’d like you to meet Dollar. The girl
I want to marry.’

Dollar flew to his side, fighting tears of joy: Seth introducing her like that meant his parents must have given their approval. ‘You’ve told them all about me?’ she whispered happily.

He swallowed hard, looking from one parent to the other. ‘This is the first they know.’

Mrs Singh cast her eye up and down Dollar. ‘I hope you are not planning to start family
life here in this house. It is far too large for small children and it will be impossible to heat.’

‘I wouldn’t want to carpet it,’ Japinder agreed, looking at the acres of marble floor.

‘We’ll buy somewhere smaller,’ Seth said. ‘Closer to Bradford. Mostly we’ll live in Mumbai. Until the kids arrive, at least.’ He gave Dollar an encouraging smile.

Mrs Singh’s dark eyes bored
into her future daughter-in-law’s, disapproving yet resigned. ‘Japinder and I were hoping he would introduce you eventually. He has clearly been in love with somebody for many years. I threatened him many times that I would choose him a wife and found him many suitable girls in the hope that it would force his hand, but nothing worked. What has changed your mind, Arjan?’

‘She saved my life
today,’ Seth took Dollar’s hand and kissed it, ‘and I realized that life is not worth living without her.’

‘Ah.’ Mrs Singh seemed unimpressed. ‘Is that why you are dressed as the Lone Ranger? He was quite obsessed with the TV show as a boy,’ she told Dollar, rolling her eyes at Seth’s
ad hoc
disguise. ‘And who are all these people, Arjan? Do you know them?’

‘A few,’ he admitted.

‘Then ask them to go home. I would like to go to bed and they are very noisy. What is your real name?’ she asked Dollar.

‘Dulari.’

‘That will be what I will call you. It is pretty. Japinder, wish your son and Dulari good night. Where is our room?’

‘You have sixteen bedroom suites to choose from,’ Seth told her proudly, beckoning for one of his staff to take his parents’
luggage and show them to the best guest suite.

‘Why did you not tell me this is a hotel? Now it makes sense. I would have preferred it if you had booked one that is a little quieter, Arjan, but it has a very attractive lake.’

Seth’s father gave him a long-suffering smile. ‘Cricket match tomorrow, you say?’

Seth nodded. ‘I don’t think it’s exactly Headingley, but it’s the first
time I’ve owned my own pitch.’

‘Now you know you’ve made it.’ Japinder grinned, gripping his shoulders. ‘Your mother’s mighty relieved, lad. She was starting to think she might be a fella.’ He nodded at Dollar.

Seth hugged him. ‘Dollar’s everything to me.’

His father gave him a toothy smile. ‘Happen you’ll be a good husband. Your mother’s right about this house, though. It’s
far too damned big.’

Kat and Dougie leaned over the gate, watching Sri roll in the moonlight.

‘When I bring Zephyr home, we’ll put her in foal to him,’ he promised.

‘Who says she wants a foal?’

‘You don’t ask horses, Kat. You put them together and see what happens.’

‘Offering them a million doesn’t work, then?’

His eyes gleamed in the half-light.
‘Are you ever going to forgive me for that?’

‘In a year’s time when the estate’s been sold as a country club and we’re totally broke with lawyers on our arses and geriatric goats on the loose round the golf course, I probably won’t forgive you for not doing your job properly.’

‘If I’d done my job properly I’d have been galloping around with a bow and arrow.’

‘That may also
feature in the next-year scenario if we can’t afford to eat, although I would prefer it if you stick to hunting fish.’

‘God, I can’t wait to live this year.’ His mouth found hers, moreish and greedy, tasting of night air and naughtiness.

‘Midsummer’s Day,’ she breathed between kisses. ‘Next year.’

‘What about it?’

Their kisses grew more urgent, the gate clanking.

‘Ask me again then.’

‘It’s a promise.’

Laughing with such overwhelming happiness that she could no longer keep her feet on the ground, Kat wrapped her arms around his shoulders and jumped up into his waiting grip, her mouth landing joyfully against his.

‘There is… one thing… I should… probably tell you,’ Dougie said, between kisses. ‘Have you ever heard… of an apple wager?’

The Eardisford cricket pitch was no longer green. A month of sun had baked the wicket to crackle glaze and the outfield was a crisp bisque.

Having breakfasted on food she thought far too rich and been driven around the estate,
which she’d declared very big and rather boring, Mrs Singh settled uncomfortably in a designer deckchair and prepared to snooze in front of a cricket match, grateful for something familiar to criticize at last. Sitting eagerly beside her, Japinder was as excited as he had been when he’d watched his son bat for the first eleven at school. Perched on the opposite side of Mrs Singh, already exhausted
from a morning with them, Dollar discreetly pulled out her tablet to surf property sites, then discovered there was no signal. The sooner they got away from Eardisford the better, as long as they moved no closer to Bradford.

The village won the toss and elected to field, then selected their fearsome spinner, Calum the Talon, to bowl. His middle finger was shaped like the bird’s
claw after which he’d been nicknamed. He dismissed the handsome opening batsman with his first ball. The crowd cheered the wicket with partisan delight, and a few crueller cat calls.

Dougie took his duck with a heroic bow and good humour, then loped off with a shrug and a smile to Kat, who had been cornered by Frank Bingham-Ince and Miriam, both looking secretive and eager.

‘I think
I have a bit of work to do on my cricket
and
my public image,’ he said to them.

‘Can’t help you with either of those, I’m afraid.’ Frank flashed his debonair smile and lowered his voice. ‘But I hear you might be looking for a job.’

They were both distracted as the crowd let out an admiring sigh and a ball whistled far overhead into God’s Plot.

At the crease, batting
third, was a handsome Indian man that the villagers took to be one of the several who were now part of the Eardisford workforce. He prepared to take the next delivery, eyes narrowed behind a high-tech face cage. In whistled a short ball, which he struck easily to the boundary again, this shot lightning quick and low.

‘What’s his name?’ checked a few in the crowd.

‘Singh.’

The delivery that followed was even shorter. This time it cracked away at shoulder height, fast as a bullet.

‘Mine!’ shouted Russ at point, diving for it, his hands cupping a fraction too late. The ball hit his forehead with a crack louder than a wicket splitting. He dropped to the grass like a felled oak.

The bloodthirsty, primeval scream from the refreshment tent woke Mrs Singh
in a clatter of fast-folding deckchair as Mags rushed out, tea-towel still in hand, throwing herself down at Russ’s side to check for a pulse. First aid not being one of her strong points, she let out a groan of anguish and turned towards the batsman. ‘You’ve killed him, you bastard! You’ve killed the man I love!’

‘Oh, hell.’ Kat watched in alarm. ‘I think Mags is going to punch
the batsman.’

‘Is Russ okay?’ Dougie peered hopefully at his lifeless form.

‘I can see his legs moving, but it looks like Calum’s going to finish him off. Quick!’

While the rest of the village watched agog, Kat raced across the pitch. She brought down Mags just before she tried to smash a fist into the batsman’s face mask.

‘She’s definitely back,’ Dawn said
proudly, as she watched Kat walking Mags to Russ, now sitting up and cross-eyed, while Dougie hauled Calum off the pitch and entrusted him to the more strapping earthmen. ‘That’s the old Kat I knew and loved. I hope she’s here to stay.’

‘Are you going to stick around and find out?’ Dair asked hopefully.

‘I think there’s quite a demand locally for Beautiful Dawn treatments.’ She nodded
happily, eyes sparkling into his. ‘The village needs me.’

‘I could use a few more. And I heard the new Eardisford tenants are very glamorous. Might bring a few new faces along. Journalists, mostly.’

‘Tenants?’

‘In the big house. It’s being leased. Seth’s a canny operator, always has a contingency plan. They’ve been waiting on his call, apparently.’

‘Who are they?’

‘Young couple with a toddler. Can you do a hair weave?’

‘I like bald men, Dair.’

‘I wasn’t talking about me.’ He whispered a name in her ear.

‘You’re kidding! I’m definitely staying. Kat needs me. God knows, those eyebrows won’t stay in shape on their own.’

Behind the peeling white screens shielding the village pitch from God’s Plot and the graveyard,
Kat’s eyebrows were riding high as Dougie’s mouth delved ever lower, her giggles muffled in his sweet-smelling hair, her heart thundering close to his soft, exploring mouth.

‘Can you cope with a year of Eardisford’s love triangles and vicious circles?’

‘Geometry was never my strong subject. And who says it’s just a year?’

‘Talk to Frank.’ She drew his face up to hers, pulling
him into a kiss that lasted three overs.

‘Remind me, where exactly are your professional players?’ Dollar asked Seth as he came off the field after the twentieth over, his half-century contributing to a healthy but beatable declaration from the estate team of 105 for 8 before tea.

‘I’m sure they’re enjoying their guided tour of Hereford Cathedral.’ He pulled off his gloves,
casting a rueful smile over his shoulder at his village opposition coming off the field, all back-slapping cheerfully as they contemplated the victory march ahead. ‘Dougie is right. You simply can’t cheat at cricket.’

‘Rubbish!’ Japinder argued enthusiastically from his deckchair. ‘Every nation cheats at cricket. It’s how honourably you cheat that counts.’

‘I did take out their best
batsman – at some considerable personal risk,’ Seth reminded his father, who laughed with ribald approval, waking his wife with such a jolt that her deckchair folded up again.

‘I had the woman with pink hair who tried to attack you in my gun sights throughout; you were perfectly safe,’ Dollar assured Seth in an undertone before turning to extract her future mother-in-law with as much dignity
as possible from her snapped mouse-trap of striped canvas.

Watching them, Seth wondered how he could have ever contemplated marrying anybody else.

After a cricket tea of cakes worthy of a televised bake-off, guaranteed to thicken arteries and waists – as well as thicken a few heads thanks to Babs Hedges’ minted cider cup – the rival teams embarked on twenty more overs in which Dougie
Everett almost clinched the estate’s victory with bowling so accurate that it seemed he could have taken out the wasps hovering over the pavilion wheelie-bin a wing at a time, only for the assault to be foiled by a hook from Jed the pub chef that sent the ball so high it sailed through the church tower arches out of play and had to be replaced. The new ball had a bounce all of its own making,
never going the same way twice.

‘Full of lead shot one side,’ one of the estate’s oldest retainers told Seth wisely as they fielded gully and point. ‘They always do this if we bat first.’

The match came down to the last ball of the twentieth over, fast bowled by diminutive Gut, whose long run up involved a facial expression of such fierceness and a Quasimodo stoop of such impossible
angularity that the batsman was still watching open-mouthed when the ball whistled past his gloved fingers and struck the wicket.

‘Howzat!’ Gut threw up his arms.

‘NO BALL!’ shouted Dair, who was umpiring, the low tilt of his Panama making all who watched wonder how he could see.

‘Out!’ yelled the second umpire.

Soon a cacophony of protests and counter protests had
broken out.

‘DRAW!’ called Dollar, her deep voice so authoritative it silenced all.

Seth turned at her in horror, thinking that she had pulled out her gun. But she was simply appealing for a truce, her slender arms held wide, calling for Eardisford village and estate to shake hands and declare the match too close to call.

The village ladies were the first to join in with her
rally, ‘Draw!’

Soon the earthmen were a bass part of the chorus. ‘DRAW.’

‘Draw!’ The estate gamekeepers and gardeners added their baritone bellows.

‘Draw!’ shouted Mr and Mrs Singh in descant.

‘Draw,’ Seth mouthed at Dougie who was eyeing him from mid-wicket and nodded almost imperceptibly.

Meanwhile the umpires had consulted and were nodding too, Panama dipped
to Panama, hands raised, eliciting a great cheer as they led a cavalcade to the pavilion bar.

Dougie admired the bubbling amber trunk of the first pint of beer he had lifted all summer and turned to the man who had just offered him the chance to sample many more such draughts by drafting him into a local institution.

‘You want me to be the Brom and Lem huntsman?’ he asked
Frank Bingham-Ince in amazement.

‘New chap we hired broke his leg unloading a horse from a lorry first day out on mounted hound exercise. You’d be helping us out of a spot. Wage isn’t anything to write home about, but there’s accommodation and the best hedge country in Herefordshire.’

‘Can I bring my own horses?’

‘Bring as many as you like.’

Starting to laugh, Dougie
took his plane ticket to Dollar. ‘Do you think I could possibly swap this one for an aisle seat for a Friesian stallion?’