Читать книгу The Country Escape - Jane Lovering - Страница 10

A few days later, on a wet and windy day that made Dorset seem a bit less charming and a bit more exposed, I drove through to Bournemouth to buy Patrick a hay net. The orchard was getting muddy, except for the patch at the top of the slope, and I began to worry that he wouldn’t be getting enough food from the remaining grass.

When I drove back, windscreen wipers flailing ineffectually against the rain, there was a car parked in the gateway. Patrick had his head over the gate and was staring at it as though he’d never seen a wheeled vehicle before, and I had to inch past to get my car to its usual resting place near the front gate.

The rain thundered on the car roof. The lane was practically a stream, water cascading down the hill towards the ford and mingling with the leaves that were starting to fall. The whole thing had become a slick surface of brown, interwoven with little rivulets, like a map of the Nile delta done in miniature outside my door.

As soon as I got out of the car, the doors to the other car opened and Gabriel and Keenan came dashing out. Gabriel had his coat collar turned up and Keenan was holding a macintosh spread out over his head, like a tiny portable tent.

‘You should have rung,’ I said, opening the front door. ‘Said you were coming, and I’d have been in.’

‘It’s fine.’ Keenan dusted rain off the top of his thinning hair. ‘I really wanted to look at the outside anyway, get a feel for the place, do a bit of logistics work. I think it will be great, but we’ll need a small crew, maybe bring the minibus down. We won’t get the lorries down this lane – in fact, the minibus might be a squeeze.’

‘And Larch won’t walk in.’ Gabriel was looking around at the walls now. With the recent drop in temperature and increase in humidity, they’d assumed a kind of slickness that the woodlice were using to stage team luge competitions. ‘We might have to form a human chain to carry her down from the main road.’

Keenan sighed. ‘Yeah, for a nature lover, she really doesn’t like being outside much, does she?’

‘Or getting wet, getting cold, wind, too much sunshine, noisy seagulls and most other wildlife. Are we actually sure that it’s nature she likes and not just photographs of fields?’

Gabriel gave me a sideways grin and I realised that I was being included in this insider talk for a reason. It was an introduction to the cast in a roundabout way, presumably so that I wouldn’t be all star-struck and breathless when I met them.

He needn’t have bothered. I’d met famous people before and, essentially, they were mostly just wallies who were good at one particular thing. Actors wouldn’t be any different, just better looking.

‘So, can I have a tour?’ Keenan carefully draped the wet raincoat over the back of a chair. I’d led them through to the kitchen, which was marginally warmer than the rest of the house, although the damp air clung more in here. The flagstones shone with the water, and condensation was making little net curtains over the windows.

‘Of course. Gabriel, I’ve ordered some hay for Patrick. They’re going to deliver it tomorrow. You might want to tell… Granny Mary.’ It felt awkward, giving a personalised name to a woman I’d never met, although, the way Gabriel used it, it was more as if Granny Mary were her actual name than an honorific.

‘Good thinking. I’ll text her later. I’m going over to see her tomorrow, so, no doubt, she’ll have things to tell me then. I think she’s been quite worried about Patrick, so it will be a relief.’

‘How is she doing?’ I put the kettle on the stove. Keenan was lurking about in the doorway as though he was trying to urge me on with the house tour. I couldn’t really blame him – until the stove really got going it was a bit like being at the bottom of a well in here.

‘She’s coming on nicely. Thank you.’

‘And Patrick is the horse?’ Keenan asked, still hovering.

‘Yes. He’s just out there.’ I pointed to the streaming window.

Keenan looked towards it and jumped back with a little scream. ‘Oh, dear God, it’s like something out of a horror film!’

Patrick had his nose right up against the window and was looking in with his pirate eye. He blew a long snort, which sent a spray up the glass, and then shook himself impressively. He’d got a full winter coat now, which made him look twice as wide, and a series of muddy patches where he’d been rolling under the trees.

‘Are you sure that’s a horse? It’s not a cow doing impressions?’ Keenan asked, with nervous apprehension in every word. ‘Because I’m beginning to think the pig idea was maybe better.’

‘He’s fine,’ I said, leading Keenan off to show him the rest of the house. As I ushered him through the depressingly short series of rooms, I realised that I’d actually grown quite fond of Patrick. Although probably in the same way as one would grow fond of an occasional stalker, or a nasty fungal infection – they were a presence that you got used to.

‘And that’s pretty much Harvest Cottage.’ I concluded the tour with us traipsing back down the still bare-floored staircase, our footsteps rattling in competition with the rain on the roof.

Keenan bit his lip. ‘You’re right, Gabe!’ he called. ‘Pretty much has serial killer written all over it.’

‘Thanks,’ I muttered. ‘I do have to live here, you know.’

Gabriel came out of the kitchen with mugs. ‘The kettle boiled,’ he said. ‘I don’t know how you take yours, but I assumed some milk and sugar wouldn’t go amiss in this atmosphere. It’s like camping, indoors.’

I almost dropped the mug in surprise. How long had it been since someone made me a cup of tea? Luc would never have thought of it, and he despised ordinary tea. If it wasn’t coffee strong enough to keep the shape of the cup as you drank it, or one of the million different forms of Earl Grey that Harrods Food Hall sold, he wasn’t interested. Poppy would sometimes offer, but usually forget and go off to do something more interesting than pander to her aged parent’s tea urge. Work then, probably. Basia would sometimes make a cup for both of us, if I was deep in conversation with the department head, but we usually made our own in the staffroom.

Even though I usually took my tea with a tiny splash of milk and no sugar, I drank Gabriel’s tea as though it were the nectar of the gods. And he was right: the touch of sugar helped my mood to lift beyond the heavy clouds and persistent rain.

‘Next week all right?’ Keenan looked at me over the rim of his mug. The steam from the tea had made his glasses steam up, and I noticed that Gabriel had taken his off, probably for just that reason. ‘Weather forecast is better for next week. We’ll do Larch’s scenes first. We’ll carry her in in a sedan chair if we have to, but we’ll never get her down here if it’s raining. We’ve got to make the most of Peter while we’ve got him too. He’s off doing a Broadchurch docu soon, so we have to fit his scenes in.’

I had no idea who ‘Peter’ was, and probably didn’t need to know. ‘Do you need me to be around?’ I asked.

Keenan and Gabriel exchanged a look. ‘We-e-e-e-e-elll…’ Keenan pushed at his glasses. ‘If you promise not to be one of those home-owners who say, “Mind the china!” and, “You can’t go in there!” as we try to set up shots…’

‘I haven’t got any china except these mugs and a couple of plates,’ I said, waving a hand to indicate the kitchen. ‘And you’ve got free run of the place – you’re paying for it, after all. You are still paying, aren’t you?’ I added, with an anxious look at the electricity meter on the wall, which was ticking away the fact that I’d put all the lights on to make the place look more inviting. It actually just made it look like a well-illuminated serial-killer hideout, evidently.

‘Yeah, course. Finance will be on it now.’

I tried to hide my relief, but I think Gabriel noticed. He must have been really good at reading big-picture body language, because my face wasn’t close enough for him to see my expression, even though he’d put his glasses back on. After our disturbingly uncomfortable parting the other night, I didn’t want to stand too close to him. He probably winced as an automatic reaction whenever I approached anyway.

‘I’m going to take a look outside.’ Keenan pulled his macintosh from the back of the chair, where it had dripped little puddles onto the floor. ‘I want to get a proper vision of the front, maybe go down to the ford and see what it’s like down there.’

‘Knock yourself out.’ Gabriel perched on the corner of the kitchen table. ‘I’m staying in the dry. Well, dryish,’ he corrected, looking at the wall near the pantry, where a now-visible skin of damp was forming. ‘This is only not outdoors because convention dictates.’

I gave him a probably wasted stern look. ‘We can’t all afford double-glazed centrally heated comfort, you know,’ I said. ‘Poppy and I have a roof over our heads and we’re grateful for that. Well, I’m grateful, she complains constantly, but that’s pretty much standard for fourteen. If you don’t live in a palace with servants to clean, pick up after you and do your homework for you, then life isn’t, apparently, worth living.’ I thought for a moment. ‘Actually, even if you have all those things, life is pretty shit when you’re fourteen.’

‘Didn’t you say you were a pony-mad girl? Fourteen is about prime age for spending every possible moment in the stable, if I remember Thea at that age.’ Gabriel sipped more tea. ‘I was more about swimming when I was fourteen. School had a swimming team.’ His expression went a bit misty. ‘Wasn’t bad at it either.’

‘Yes, well.’ I put my mug down so firmly onto the marble slab of the worktop that there was an ominous cracking noise. ‘Let’s not start wandering down memory lane just now. Patrick needs water.’

The big piebald head had vanished from the window, but there was a heavy squelching sort of noise from outside, which indicated that he was walking round the cottage.

‘Water? He’s practically swimming out there.’

‘But he can’t drink it, can he?’ I fetched the multi-purpose bucket from the corner, where washing down the paintwork had become a little superfluous – it was currently washing itself down perfectly adequately – and tipped it into the sink.

‘Would you like to come and meet Granny Mary?’ Gabriel asked suddenly. ‘I feel she’s slightly become the spectre at the feast here, and I know she’d like to meet the person who’s taking care of her beloved. You could come with me when I go in tomorrow.’

I hesitated, bucket under the tap.

‘It’s okay, she doesn’t eat people.’ Gabriel saw my hesitation. ‘At least, not any more.’

And it suddenly came home to me how isolated I’d become. Apart from Gabriel and Keenan and, of course, Poppy, the only conversation I’d really had in the last week had been with the girl behind the till in the equestrian supply shop, who’d sold me the hay net. And that had been about the weather. What was happening to me? In London I’d been sociable. I’d talked all day at work, to my students, to my friends, to other staff members. And, of course, to Poppy, although, now I came to think of it, a lot of that talk had been me nagging her to do things.

Was I in danger of becoming a recluse? Tucked away in my little cottage halfway down this hillside, no passing traffic and no drop-in visitors? Well, that was an alarming thought, and it made me answer Gabriel a little reflexively.

‘I’d love to meet her. Of course.’

He hesitated. ‘We’d need to get the early bus – would that be all right? After ten it’s full of bus pass people and you can’t always get on.’

I stared at him. ‘I can drive, you know.’

‘Well, yes, but I didn’t like to assume that you—’

‘When’s visiting time?’

He rubbed a hand through his hair. It seemed to be something he did when he was thinking, I noticed, distracted by how long his hair was. It nearly brushed his collarbone, and I wondered why he’d grown it. ‘Eleven, tomorrow.’

‘I’ll pick you up in the village, then. Half past ten?’ Again the hesitancy. Surely he didn’t have a thing about women driving? Okay, this was rural Dorset, but it wasn’t backwoods America, and he looked fairly evolved.

‘Are you sure it’s no trouble?’ He’d taken the glasses off again now, and was looking at me with that curiously exposed look that glasses wearers often have when they have their barrier against the world removed.

‘Compared to finding a bus stop, waiting, missing the bus, bus running late, getting to the other end and having to find the location whilst not knowing where to get the bus back from? I’d say driving was the least of it.’

Gabriel tilted his head. ‘Some of us don’t have a choice,’ he said gently.

‘Sorry, no. Of course. But I don’t mind driving and the car could do with being out a bit more often. It’s starting to look like the world’s most expensive garden gnome out there.’

I didn’t know whether it was my apology or my lightening of the tone, but his face lightened too. ‘Tomorrow at ten thirty. I’ll be outside Thea’s shop waiting. You can’t miss it – it’s the one with all the knitted monstrosities in the window. Now I’d better go and syphon Kee back into the car. We’ve got to see a couple more locations this afternoon before it gets dark.’

We stood together in the doorway. Keenan was a dark smear beyond the window; he’d wound his coat around his upper body and head like a shroud and was walking up and down the front path, glazed with rain and muttering.

‘Looks like Davin’s family banshee on holiday,’ Gabriel observed. ‘Let me get him out of here.’

We stared at one another for a moment. ‘Let’s agree on a handshake,’ I said.

‘I was going to go for cheek kiss?’

‘I’m just going to gently pat your arm. It’s safer.’

There was a bit of a moment of confusion when we both raised our right hands, but because we were standing face to face there wasn’t room for either of us to do anything with the raised hand, and we lowered them again.

‘Take it as read?’ he said, after a bit of elbow-clonking.

‘I think so, yes.’ I opened the door.

Keenan, mac over head dripping like a gutter, jumped and then said, ‘We’d better go. I think I’m dissolving.’

I closed the door and went back to Patrick’s bucket.