Country Pleasures (6 page)

‘Right. I mean it. No hot throbbing anythings. We won't find them down here, anyway. Let's leave Mastov and his tie collection in Holland Park, shall we? For the next two weeks, it's just going to be the two of us.'

‘Absolutely, sergeant major, whatever you say. And now it's my turn to bark orders. If we're forbidden the real thing, you can be the man about the house, and go and get some logs.'

It was still raining, and much darker by the time Janie got herself psyched up for going outside. She shrugged on one of the enormous hooded raincoats that hung in the hall, making a big deal of undoing the latch and clucking at the appalling weather.

‘No dithering,' Sally warned from the relative cosiness of the sitting room. ‘I'm going to find another bottle of wine.'

‘Keep it on ice then, will you?' Janie said. ‘I'm feeling kind of restless. I could do with a stiff walk.'

‘Horny, you mean! God, I should talk dirty to you more often.'

‘I won't be long,' Janie said, ignoring the truth of Sally's comment. She put on a wholesome air. ‘Here I go, into the wind and rain, hunting and gathering.'

Sally waggled her fingers dismissively and sprawled out on the sofa again, one leg hooked over the arm. Her petite hand slid down the front of her jeans as she absently stroked her stomach and started to doze. She had switched off already and was probably dreaming up another colourful scenario, but Janie was as jumpy as a sack of fleas.

First, she searched outside the cottage but, as she suspected, there were no logs to be seen. Ben might own this little place, but he was the most impractical person she knew. She walked on down the uneven garden path and opened the gate. An enormous willow leaned over, brushing her face with its long silvery
leaves and sending drops of rainwater down her neck as she passed. The garden was so overgrown that a passer-by would never know there was a cottage there unless they looked really hard, which was how Ben liked it. The gate led straight onto a pitted driveway, which in turn led up onto the narrow road that ran up from the sea towards the nearest town.

Instead of making her way along the road, Janie walked straight across the drive in her huge borrowed gumboots. She felt through the thorns and found the gap in the hedge where she and her cousin used to punch and scrabble their way through to the farmer's land. It would take forty minutes or so to go round by road, and only about ten minutes across the field. No one would see her. She'd be there and back with some logs in no time. And if not, they'd have to go down to the beach tomorrow and gather driftwood.

The wine was making her ears sing, and Sally's adventure threaded through her brain, words and images popping like bubbles in front of her eyes. Chasing up behind the words and images was a new, sharp hunger that pierced and twisted in Janie's consciousness. As usual, Sally was right. This must be sheer frustration for her friend, she thought. She supposed this strong feeling was usually dormant or non-existent, but now it was so acute that it hurt.

She started to stride round the edge of the field towards the farm. There were no crops planted there this year, only tufts of tall meadow grass and clumps of mud. The owners were letting the farm go to ruin. Janie looked down at her boots as she walked, her friend's erotic play re-enactment still vivid in her mind. Sally was sex-mad, they'd always joked about that, but seeing her dancing and showing what went on between her legs was like peering through a keyhole
and being unable to tiptoe away. Rushing away from the cottage made no difference. She could still visualise the steamy scene in the London flat, the silk ties flicking like whips over Sally's supine body while she bent over the bed. Janie could go further than that. She could see herself lying on the black sheets, her own legs spread open, her own naked breasts tied up, her own nipples singing with the excitement and the cold while a stranger stood over her, unbuttoning his trousers.

Sally was rocking the boat by introducing all that sex. Janie had been planning a long quiet summer with no drama and no hassle. But then again, she should have known better than to expect a quiet life once that little she-cat was at large.

She was glad that the rain lashed hard to distract her, as it swept in from the nearby sea. Janie was forced to bend against the wind as she got closer to the ramshackle buildings of the neighbouring farm. She thought she could hear the rattle of a Land Rover engine over to her left, approaching the cottage, but that wasn't so unusual. The road was accessed by all the nearby fields and was the only route to town from the sea.

She took the short cut into the old farm by scrambling over the broken fence beside the pig sheds, and landed up to her ankles in thick mud. She had to tug her knee with both hands to get her foot out and plant it on the concrete yard. Near the farmhouse a couple of wheelbarrows had been left, and a bright yellow digger was parked with its claws resting against what used to be the old dairy. But there was no sign of life.

Janie had no desire to inspect the rest of the farm tonight, although as kids she, Ben and Jack would have been unable to resist clambering all over the
abandoned digger, trying to start it up. She glanced over to the other side of the yard and sure enough there was a pile of logs, just as she remembered, stacked tight under the eaves of the biggest barn so that most of them were still dry. She looked around. The whole place really was falling down, and was creepy in the dark wet evening light, even without the ancient farmer with his squint and missing teeth jumping out at her. She hurried over to the logs and stretched until she could reach to pull the top ones off the pile, and chucked them into her basket.

‘What do you think you're doing?'

Janie straightened so sharply that she cracked her head hard against a metal rafter, knocking the hood over her eyes and dropping a log on her toe. Someone equally hooded and dripping wet had materialised round the corner of the barn and was standing a couple of feet away. She could barely see through the curtain of raindrops, but he was extremely tall, extremely broad, and extremely armed with a shovel.

‘Nothing. Well, alright, I'm looking for logs,' Janie croaked, hopping about and biting back yelps of pain. ‘We're cold in our cottage and I want to make a fire. There's nobody here to mind.'

‘Oh, but there is. Me.'

The figure stepped closer and Janie dodged against the wall. The man wore a tweed cap under the hood of his jacket, which he tipped up to take a better look at her. All Janie could see was an unshaven chin, a grimly set mouth, and a pair of black eyes that glinted behind a pair of understated tortoiseshell spectacles. The two soaked figures glared at each other for a moment.

‘I thought you were a bloke, until you started speaking,' he said.

‘Not this time.'

‘So I'll ask you again: what do you think you're doing?'

‘I thought the place was sold, thought the old man had gone,' Janie muttered, rubbing her head to try and remove the stars that danced in front of her eyes. ‘I didn't think anyone would be here. The logs will only get wet if they're not used.'

‘It has been sold, and the old man died a while ago. The new owner thought he was buying an old farm in the quietest corner of England he could find, and he'd be extremely pissed off if he thought thieves were at work the minute he takes possession.'

‘He's not here, is he, and we're only talking about a couple of old logs.' Her head was banging painfully, and she started to sway.

‘Are you all right? I can see a cut,' the farmer said, sounding suddenly concerned. He put one hand on the clapboard wall beside her and leaned forwards to examine her forehead. He raised his other hand towards her face, and Janie flinched, knocking the hood off her head.

‘Relax! Jesus, a guilty conscience, or what? I just want to take a look.'

‘What are you, a paramedic as well as a poacher?' Janie asked.

‘As it happens, I do know what I'm doing. Now look, you're bleeding,' he said. He turned his hands inside out like a conjuror to show that there was no weapon, then lifted her wet hair off her forehead. ‘Not much, but it's trickling from your scalp, just here.'

He held out the tip of his finger, and they both stared at the blood.

‘Come in here. It's the only place with a roof,' he said, guiding her backwards into the barn. He propped the door shut with his shovel.

Outside, the wind ripped at pieces of tarpaulin and loose sheets of corrugated iron, but this corner of the barn was sheltered and the straw was dry. Janie sat down on a hay bale and bent her head between her knees for a moment. She'd never been good with blood. The sight of it made her sweat. Still with her eyes closed, she tugged off her drenched coat and shook her hair in wet ropes down her back.

‘I was rude,' she said into the floor. ‘If we're going to be closeted away in here until the rain stops, I should say I'm sorry. But I wasn't expecting to bump into anyone. It's been derelict up here for years.'

‘I know. It's going to take a lot of work to sort this place out. I'm sorry, too, for alarming you.' He tried the light switch, but nothing happened. Then she heard his feet rustling through the straw. The dry scent of old hay wafted into her nostrils. He stopped. ‘The natural light's not very good, but I wonder if there's something familiar about you.'

His voice was right up by her face, tickling her ear. The hay bale wobbled as he sat down next to her.

‘What?'

Janie lifted her head. It felt better.
She
felt better. This was the first moment since Sally's descent on the cottage with her fizzing urban energy and her teasing, tormenting tales, that Janie had felt some calm. The heat was still there, resting in her veins, but it made her limbs languid. She was so calm that she was pinned to her hay bale like a butterfly.

‘That dark-red hair of yours, colour of claret. I've seen hair like this before. Never got close enough to smell it, though, in the old days. Tell me, what is that smell? Rain, mixed with nervous female heat and what? Marigolds?'

Janie's mouth dropped open. In the dull light his
specs were like blank screens. Behind them she could just make out his eyes, fixed like beads.

‘How would you know that?' she asked. ‘As it happens, you're exactly right. It's my shampoo. It has marigolds in it.'

‘I told you. It's either the smell or the colour that's familiar. And so are you, though I can't put a finger on it yet.'

‘You're mistaken. I'm not from round here.'

‘Nor am I, but you knew this farm was derelict.'

‘We used to visit, and play around here as kids. My cousin and his friend. We used to think old Maddock and his sons were evil trolls. They used to chase us with their pitchforks. Once the whole tribe came after us with a gun.'

‘I don't blame him,' said the stranger. ‘You were probably ruining the harvest and frightening the livestock.'

‘Yes, we were pains in the arse, but nobody could say I was frightening the livestock today.'

‘You frightened me.'

Janie laughed. He smiled back, his glasses glinting. He slid off the bale and squatted down in front of her, then balanced his hands on either side of her thighs. His oilskin jacket creaked across his shoulders as he sniffed at her again like a gun dog.

‘I ought to call you Marigold,' he said.

‘And I ought to call it a day,' replied Janie, swallowing her laughter and pulling back. She glanced towards the door, where the rain was bucketing down. There was no light out there, not even a sickle moon. She had no idea what time it was.

‘You can't, not yet, you have been injured. Head injuries need rest, and relaxation.'

‘Head injury? It's a tiny cut from a rafter!' protested Janie.

‘A rusting metal rafter. You can't be too careful. And this storm is doing nothing to clear the air, is it?' The stranger wiped his hand across his face. ‘If anything, it's getting hotter in here.'

Still staring at her, he pulled his heavy jacket off, taking the tweed cap with it, and letting everything fall in a wet heap behind him. He looked younger without the ‘Farmer Giles' outfit; not much older than her, in fact. He wore a faded blue T-shirt, so old and loose that she could see the ropes of muscle in his deeply tanned neck and shoulders, and a pulse beating beneath the sinews. She wouldn't mind sitting here, looking at his neck all day.

‘You see? You're sweating,' he said. ‘That makes two of us. I can't think why it's suddenly so hot in here. Not running a fever, I hope?'

He laid a hand across Janie's forehead like a nurse. Her skin prickled up her neck as his face drew closer again. There was a ticking sensation just inside the opening of her pussy, a tiny muscle contracted the moment he touched her. What had Sally said about being in the taxi with Mastov? That all it took was one flick of his fingernail after months of dreary celibacy. This prickling all over her certainly wasn't fear. She didn't want to escape. She never wanted to move again.

The man's damp hair stood up in dark tufts where the cap had ruffled it and she could see one black wisp slowly reshaping itself into a tight curl behind his ear as it dried.

‘I'm not ill, no,' she said. ‘I just put too many clothes on when I came out. I forgot that it's supposed to be July.'

‘Don't normally need logs in July.'

‘It's not normally so damned freezing in July. At least, it is in our cottage.'

He pulled his sleeves down his arms and Janie watched the material wrinkle on his skin. Before she could stop it her mind had burrowed under the shirt, wondering whether there were curls on his chest or down on his stomach, like there were on his head.

‘Stay here and get warm, then,' he said. ‘Your cottage must be even more derelict than this place.'

‘I should go,' she said, without making any attempt to move. But while she kept her eyes on his brown neck, her mind remained further down his body. Nothing could stop it, nothing could stop the insistent private twitching and aching inside her. She was mentally unbuttoning his jeans, seeing the wiry curls springing in a nest of hair round his resting, waiting prick.