Kate's Progress (10 page)

To the right was a bar, also panelled and stone-floored, though the flooring was perfectly even and obviously new. The furniture was either original or good reproduction, with seat-cushions matching the curtains, tasteful chintz in muted shades; high-backed settles along one wall; a handsome, varnished bar with brass fittings and high stools in front of it. She could hear a murmur of conversation from inside, but from her position could not see anyone, and for a moment she felt absurdly shy about going in. This was obviously a place for the moneyed and the county set. She glanced down at the dirt under her fingernails that she hadn’t managed to get out, and the grubby plasters over the remaining cuts on her hands, and felt the Oak calling her back. Here she’d be a nylon anorak on a wax jacket peg.

While she still hesitated she heard a wuff behind her, and turned to see beyond the open street door a big black dog with a dense, rough coat. Glad of the excuse she took a step or two towards it. ‘Is it you?’ she said. It stared a moment, ears cocked, and then ran to her, tail swinging, eyes bright, tongue at the ready. Yes, it was the same dog. She could see the near-bald spot by the tail where she had sawn off inches of coat. ‘So, you’ve remembered your manners at last, have you?’ she said as she caressed it, fending off the worst excesses of the tongue, rubbing its ruff, scratching behind its ears until it was in a slobber of ecstasy.

As she bent over the dog, something blocked the light from the door, and she looked up to see a man standing there, observing. ‘Seems you’ve made a new friend,’ he said.

She straightened, one hand still on the dog’s head. It was a man in his mid-thirties, she guessed, with sexy blue, slightly bloodshot eyes and a killer smile. He had rough-cut, toffee coloured hair with blond highlights – both, she guessed, expensively wrought by a skilled barber to look natural; he was wearing chinos, expensive loafers, and a dark blue shirt that perfectly set off his eyes; and he was swinging a set of car keys on a worn leather fob as he looked at her with the intense interest of a man who likes women – all women.

‘Oh, he’s not a new friend. We’ve already met,’ she said.

‘He never mentioned you,’ he replied, playing along.

‘Probably ashamed. He didn’t cover himself with glory on that occasion.’

The blue eyes examined her with increased interest. ‘You wouldn’t happen to know anything about his sudden acquisition of several bald spots, would you?’

She shrugged ruefully. ‘Sorry about that. He was tangled up in some barbed wire and it was the only way I could get him out. He’s got a very dense coat.’

‘Don’t I know it!’ The man smiled – boy, was that devastating! – and came towards her, holding out his hand. She took it, and immediately he covered it with his other hand as well, drawing her slightly towards him. She smelled his subtle, expensive aftershave and, this close, realized that he was not particularly handsome, but that he had so much charm you would never notice or care. ‘So you save old Chewy, did you? I owe you a huge debt. My kid would have been heartbroken if anything had happened to him.’

Kate swallowed a ridiculous disappointment at the news that he had a child, which meant he must be married. Ridiculous, because she wasn’t on the hunt. Never again. She was done with all that nonsense.

She had to say something, and she said, ‘Chewy, is that his name?’

‘Theo named him. That’s my little boy. After Chewbacca, because he’s big and hairy. But he also does have a propensity for chewing things – shoes, mostly.’ The dog licked their joined hands, and he released hers at last. ‘So, are you just arriving or just leaving? Arriving, I hope. Come on in and let me buy you a drink.’

‘Oh, no, I—’ Kate began an automatic denial.

‘Please,’ he interrupted. ‘It’s the least I can do to say thanks. I promise you, we were out of our minds when we found he’d slipped his collar and run off, and then when he didn’t come back … Please, come and have a drink and tell me how you found him.’

She hesitated one more moment, on account of his being a married man, though it was broad daylight and a public place.

He looked at her quizzically and then said, ‘Lord, where are my manners? I haven’t introduced myself, and you don’t know me from Adam. But I promise you everyone knows me around here, and the guv’nor here, Terry, will vouch for me. My name’s Jack Blackmore.’

He put out his hand again, and as she retook it (it was warm and dry and strong, just the sort of hand a man ought to have) he grinned and said, ‘Stupid name, I know, but I did the best I could with it – I managed to persuade most of the kids at school to call me Blackjack, which was way cooler than Jack Black, don’t you think? Anyway,’ he went on, using her captive hand to turn her towards the bar, ‘I live just around the corner, at The Hall, and I promise I’m not a mad axe-murderer.’

She yielded, laughing. ‘I’m quite sure you’re not. And even though I’m new around here, I’ve heard of the Blackmores, and I know where The Hall is, so I’m sure I’m quite safe.’ And hadn’t Kay said that the younger Blackmore, Jack, was divorced? So hopefully she wouldn’t be treading on anyone’s toes.

They were in the bar now. There were a few people sitting around the room at the tables, chatting quietly, and one man on a stool at the far end, with a brown-and-white spaniel at his feet. Chewy ran to greet the spaniel, but he was evidently well known as the owner did not display any misgivings, though Chewy was large enough to engulf it.

The barman came up to the near end, eyebrows raised in greeting. ‘Hullo, Jack. What’ll it be?’ He spared a glance for Kate, checking her over and obviously wondering about her.

Jack led her up to the bar, and turned to smile down at her. ‘D’you know what we ought to have? A bottle of champagne to celebrate your saving Chewy, and my meeting you at last to thank you.’

‘Oh, no,’ Kate demurred. ‘That’s too much. Anyway, I—’

‘No, really,’ he said seriously, ‘it’s the perfect drink for this time of day. I prefer it at lunchtime anyway, because it’s so much lighter, especially if you’ve got to go back to work.’ He had guessed the last part of her objection. ‘Unless,’ he added, ‘you don’t actually
like
champagne?’

‘I love it,’ Kate confessed, ‘but—’

‘Well, then!’ The devastating smile was back. To the barman he said, ‘Bottle of Ayala, please, Ken. Ken here will confirm that I generally drink Ayala at lunchtime, I’m not just putting it on to try and impress you. Isn’t that right, Ken?’

‘S’right,’ said Ken, his face determinedly neutral as he turned to the glass-fronted chiller cabinets behind him. Had he witnessed this sort of scene before?

‘And beside,’ Jack went on, still addressing Ken, ‘this young lady is a genuine, gold plated hero. She saved Chewy from an awful death, and me from having to explain it to Theo.’ He looked down at Kate. ‘You haven’t told me your name. I can’t keep calling you “this young lady”.’

‘Especially not for the length of a bottle of champagne.’ Kate laughed. ‘And it does sound rather evil-uncle-y. “Young lady” seems to have all sorts of connotations these days, doesn’t it?’

He laughed too. ‘Quite right, and there’s the whole feminist thing as well – don’t they object to “lady” as opposed to “woman”? It’s a minefield.’

‘I feel rather sorry for men these days. You must often think it’s safer just not to speak at all.’

‘I’m afraid there’s no way you’d make me stop talking, unless you had me freeze-dried,’ he said, grinning. ‘So what is it, anyway?’

‘What is what?’

‘Your name. You still haven’t told me.’

‘Oh, sorry! Kate Jennings.’

He took the excuse for another handshake. ‘Jennings – that’s an Exmoor name,’ he said enquiringly.

‘My dad was from around here.’

‘But you’re new here, you said. Not just passing through, I hope?’

‘No, I’m living here now,’ she said.

At that moment Ken popped the bottle and they watched him pour, then lifted their glasses, and Jack said, ‘To Chewy’s brave rescuer.’

‘There was nothing brave about it,’ Kate objected.

‘All right – to new friendships. How’s that?’

Kate smiled. He was an operator, and yet he did it so nicely it was hard to object. ‘I’ll drink to that,’ she said, and did so.

‘So where exactly are you living?’ he asked when they had put their glasses back on the bar top. ‘Do you want to go a table, by the way, or are you all right here at the bar?’

‘Oh, I like sitting at bars,’ she said, and hitched herself on to a stool. He remained standing – or leaning, rather – which put their faces comfortably on a level. ‘I’ve just bought Little’s Cottage, in School Lane,’ she answered his question.

An extraordinary series of expressions flitted across his face. For a moment he looked almost disconcerted; but then it settled into friendly interest.

‘So that’s it!’ he said. ‘I heard someone had, of course. And now I come to think of it, I’d even heard your name mentioned. I
thought
it was familiar for some reason.’ Chewy, having done the round of the patrons in the bar, came back to them at that moment, and jabbed a wet nose into their spare hands in greeting. Jack looked down, and then said, ‘But tell me about how you found Chewy. All the details, please.’

It seemed to Kate almost like a change of subject, but she was happy to oblige. He was a good listener, and interpolated the right questions at the right moment to allow her to make the most of the narrative. She finished with Chewy running away without thanking her, and vowing to buy herself a big penknife when she was next in Taunton.

Jack looked in concern at her Elastoplasts. ‘Looks as though you cut yourself up a bit, rescuing this ungrateful hound.’

‘The barbed wire and the gorse between them were a bit scratchy,’ she said, making light of it. ‘But
this
one, and
this
one, are not Chewy-related. This one was a bolster slipping, and this one was a nail in the skirting-board I didn’t spot in time.’

‘How can you cut yourself on a bolster?’ he asked, looking puzzled.

‘Not a pillow bolster, I mean a builder’s bolster.’ He looked blank. ‘It’s like a big, thick chisel.’

‘Oh, I know what you mean. You are full of surprises! What were you doing with a bolster?’

‘I’m renovating Little’s myself,’ she said.

‘Really! Tell me – no, wait a minute, instinct tells me this story is going to be too long for this bottle. Let’s take the rest of it through into the dining room and have lunch – they do decent grub here.’

‘Oh, well, I—’

‘My treat. Come on, don’t tell me you don’t
eat
?’

‘Of course I eat. I actually came here for lunch. Well, it was a choice between here and the Royal Oak, and—’

‘There
is
no choice. You did well to step this way. And look how it’s turned out! Chewy had the chance to say thank you, and you and I met. Gotta be Fate, wouldn’t you say?’ He had stuffed the bottle under his arm and picked up both their glasses, bent on giving her no chance to object.

And, truth to tell, she didn’t want to. She was enjoying his company so much, not just as another human being – and she was starved of adult conversation – but as a man, a warm, funny, sexy, charming man who looked at her with interest and wanted to spend time with her. As long as she kept her head, how could that be bad?

‘Gotta be,’ she replied lightly, and let herself be led. After all, she told herself as she followed him across the hall into the dining room, it wasn’t as if she was in any danger from him. His wiles were unexceptionably obvious – he was like a genial magician revealing the secret of his tricks to the audience even as he performed them. And his warmth seemed genuine. She liked him enormously, but was not in the least danger of falling in love with him, even had she been in falling-in-love mode, which she was not. She was here on a sabbatical. She was post-Mark impregnable.

Anyway, Blackjack, just from the quality of his clothes and the thickness of the wad in his wallet, which had been revealed as he paid for the champagne, was way out of her price-range, and his interest in her could not be more than a passing, pleasant whim.

The difference between the Royal Oak and the Blue Ball could not have been more obvious than when, seated by the window at the far end near the fireplace (which was filled with a beautiful arrangement of fresh flowers) they were presented by the uniformed waitress with the menu. The Royal Oak served good, solid pub food – ploughman’s, shepherd’s pie, fish and chips, steak and ale pie, ham, egg and chips. The Blue Ball’s was restaurant food. It was one of those places that identified the farm that the meat came from; it specified that the fish was ‘fresh Cornish’ or ‘line caught’; the vegetables were ‘local’ and ‘seasonal’.

Kate tried not to look at the prices.

‘God, it all sounds so good, I don’t know how to choose,’ she said.

‘When I’m in trouble that way,’ Jack said, ‘I go by the colour of the wine I want to drink.’

She looked at him sternly across the table. ‘I can’t drink any more. I shall be completely pie-eyed. And I have to work this afternoon.’

‘But you’re your own boss,’ he said beguilingly. ‘You can take time off whenever you want.’

‘And what about you? Don’t you have to work?’

‘Nothing I can’t put off. Listen, it’s a great mistake to allow work to interfere with the business of eating. Lunch is the most important meal of the day.’

‘I thought that was breakfast,’ she objected.

‘Now abideth breakfast, lunch and dinner,’ he intoned. ‘And the greatest of these is lunch.’

‘That’s a very naughty blasphemy. You’ll be struck down,’ she warned.

‘On the contrary, I seem to be blessed. Here I am lunching in the best restaurant on Exmoor, with the prettiest, wittiest woman I’ve met in a long time. Life is good.’ He sat back in his chair with such a contented look she could only laugh. ‘Now, what will you have?’

In the end she chose smoked salmon with poached pheasant egg and wood sorrel hollandaise for a starter, followed by roast breast of duckling with cabbage charlotte and truffled potato purée. Jack chose devilled rabbit kidneys and mushrooms on toast, and the roast rack of Broad Farm lamb with lentil and rosemary juices.