The Country Escape (6 page)

‘He stayed on to take his master’s in conservation and woodland management,’ Kat added. ‘Then he took a placement in Tower Hamlets to study urban forestry, where he got interested in animal
communication.’

‘Ah, yes, the wild, roaming herds of east London,’ Dawn mused.

‘He was attacked by a pitbull,’ Kat explained. ‘Several, actually. It got him thinking about the way we domesticate animals – or don’t. He went to Thailand to rehabilitate wild dogs, and the year after that he spent the summer at a bear-rescue centre in Cambodia.’ He’d remained a familiar figure in Eardisford,
returning most summers and Christmases, although he was banned for a few years after the notorious Boxing Day meet when he took his anti-hunting stance too far by hijacking the hound lorry with thirteen couple on board. Nevertheless, the villagers remained fond of ‘Rebel Russ’, largely because of his two champions: the popular and kindly uncle who doted on him, and Mags, who mothered him
mercilessly.

That’s where all the free drinks were coming from, Dawn realized. It’s like one big happy family in here, she thought, in a glow of scrumpy. She’d met red-faced Bill Hedges and his jolly, laughing wife, with several characters Kat had referred to as the ‘earthmen’, who appeared to have only one full set of teeth between them, but made up for it with half a dozen terriers straining
on leads tied to their barstools. There were also young couples and old ladies, a posh toff and a bunch of girl grooms drinking in hay-scattered riding gear, all on friendly terms with Kat and welcoming to Dawn. Kat was liked and accepted, Dawn realized.

Although Dawn had lived in and around Watford all her life, there wasn’t a pub she could go into these days and guarantee that she’d know
anybody. Even the gym she’d belonged to for the best part of a decade had no real social side, the same faces she’d seen on the same evenings every week plugged into iPods, staring at MTV and lost in their own worlds. Being in here reminded her of life on the Caribbean liner, where the crew had become like family, the spa staff, cabaret stars and dancers always partying together late into the
night. Out at sea, she’d been in suspended animation, always travelling and never arriving, until she’d grown weary of the tiresome customers, the repetitive work and the cramped accommodation. Here, there was a sense of permanence. Nobody wanted to leave. Even the lady in the great house had hung on into her ninety-fifth year.

She was starting to understand why Kat loved Eardisford so
much that she’d stayed on to take up the new challenge after Constance had died, and even why she now shared her dilapidated home with Russ, the dark-eyed rebel. Kat had always been attracted to alpha men. This key player was a sexy maverick, unbothered whether he was accepted or not.

Almost everybody in the pub seemed connected with the hunt in some way, conversation at the bar revolving
around that day’s sport. Russ came in for a lot of goading, yet they all seemed to accept it as a part of a ritual.

‘How does he cope?’ she asked Kat. ‘Is he working deep under cover for the League Against Cruel Sports?’

Kat laughed. ‘They all know he hates hunting, and that he’ll kick up a fuss and take the rise if they want a debate, but they’ve had every argument over the years,
and they know that’s the way it is. Besides, they’re all united in a new cause at the moment, so there’s an armistice.’ She raised her eyebrows. ‘Attendance at my self-defence class has trebled since the oligarch rumour started. The villagers think Eardisford’s going to be awash with Kalashnikov-wielding heavies leaping from cars with blacked-out windows if the rents aren’t paid on time.’

‘You run a self-defence class?’ Dawn was impressed.

‘It’s more boxercise, with a few gym kicks and throws. Monday evenings in the village hall, winter and summer, Pilates in spring and autumn. I also do Bums and Tums on alternate Thursdays. Then I have riding lessons on Wednesdays and Saturdays and meditation sessions Fridays and Tuesdays.’

‘Packed schedule, then. What’s with
the meditation?’

‘Tantric,’ she mouthed, and they collapsed into giggles. ‘It’s just something I’m trying out.’ Kat wiped her eyes. ‘It’s all about breathing so far – more like casual omming than casual sex. We keep all our clothes on.’

‘Probably wise in a house as cold as yours. So it’s not serious between you and Russ?’

Dawn sensed the relationship was perhaps not as destructive
as she’d feared. Kat was going steady on the scrumpy, she noticed, but the glow was blossoming in her cheeks, and the lingering looks she was exchanging with Russ were getting hotter. With her gleaming hair falling over her shoulders like red liquorice and her deep green eyes drinking in the affection surrounding her, she looked a million miles from the wreck who’d left her nursing career,
her fiancé and home on one fateful day two years earlier.

Dawn felt she should mention Nick again, but Russ had appeared at the table clutching two shot glasses brimming with something so lime green it was almost luminous. ‘Hopflasks by way of apology from the kitchen. The food’s delayed. Jed the chef’s just heard a rumour that Eardisford’s buyer’s from Yorkshire and called Seth. He’s run
up to the church tower with Mags’s Nexus to Google it.’

Dawn knocked back a slug of the shot and almost gagged. It seemed to be pure alcohol.

‘Seth, you say?’ Kat was peering up at Russ anxiously.

Dawn was battling to make her eyes focus. ‘Not a golligarch by the shound of it. A Brit donchathink? I’ll drink to that!’ She drained the shot glass.

Russ looked at her levelly.
‘Nobody’s celebrating yet.’

‘The whole future of this place hangs on who’s bought the estate,’ Kat reminded her, chewing her lip. ‘The houses in Lower Eardisford are all estate property, tied to jobs or pensions. The same goes for the farms, this pub, the lot. Even the church and the cricket pitch are part of the estate. Whoever Seth is, he’s just taken on a lot of livelihoods around here.’

She’s terrified she’s going to lose all this, Dawn thought drunkenly. She’s just finding happiness and she might forfeit it.

‘The earthmen all reckon Dair’s in on it,’ Russ said, in an undertone. ‘He’s such a sly little sod, he looks after himself first. His father’s a baronet, after all. They’re all fucking corrupt. He’s let his game-keeping boys know their jobs are safe, which means
he knows something.’

Dawn was longing to meet Dair Armitage, who was sounding more exciting by the minute. She only wished the pub wasn’t spinning so fast. ‘Isn’t it a good thing if Dair’s jobshafe?’ she asked. ‘Surely that means everybody’s jobshafe?’ She shook her head sharply. ‘What was that drink?’

‘Hopflask. Absinthe and apple brandy flavoured with hops – a local speciality,’
Kat told her. ‘The Brom and Lem hunt staff put it in their flasks. Being offered it is to be invited into the inner circle. The first time I drank it, I lost two days. Welcome. You are officially one of us.’

Dawn felt as though fireworks were going off overhead as she crossed an invisible line to acceptance. ‘I knew this was a great dress. Hooray to the innershircle!’ She stood up, toasted
the pub at large and drained the second glass.

As she did so, in Wild West saloon tradition, the bar fell silent, a new arrival silhouetted in the door, a flat cap low over his nose, gun under one arm, shoulders as wide as barn doors. Dawn’s heart skipped a beat as she took in the antiquated, earthy manliness of it all. ‘Hellooo, big boy,’ she said, the Mae West aside coming out far louder
than she’d intended, given the bar’s silence and the drunken thrumming muffling her ears.

The man reached up to pull off his hat in amazement. ‘Well, hello there,’ he said, in a nasal Scottish voice.

Dawn’s eyes crossed and recrossed. Even through the untrustworthy goggles of scrumpy and Hopflask, Dair Armitage was a lot more attractive than Kat had made out, and nothing like Elmer
Fudd. He was Bruce Willis meets Sean Connery, with a hint of Freddie Ljungberg. His dogs were pretty cool too – two pale-eyed German pointers with coats like blanket-spot Appaloosa ponies that sat at each side of him and stared up adoringly. Dawn saw no difference between Dair and the testosterone-pumped Watford hard men who walked around with Staffies in armoured collars and gave her hard, sexy
looks that made her feel weak at the knees. After years of Dave lifting nothing heavier than his remote control, she had a secret soft spot for a real man. This one might be wearing well-cut wool breeches and waistcoat instead of trackies and a hoodie, but he was five foot ten of bald, hard-eyed sex appeal.

Better still, Dawn saw, she had his full attention.

Before anybody else could
get to him, Dawn lurched across the little public bar. ‘Just who in hell is Seth?’

‘Who are you?’

‘A new Dawn. Shit!’ She fell over one of his dogs and pitched outside through the still-open door.

As Kat scrabbled out from the corner table to help her, she realized Russ hadn’t moved. ‘Quick! She might be hurt!’

‘Nonsense. Fresh air will do her good,’ he said coolly,
eyeing the gun Dair had abandoned to rush outside and fish Dawn out of a planter filled with spring bulbs.

He carried her inside now, buckling under the weight and turning pink with excitement as her push-up bra pushed everything out of her turquoise dress.

‘I’m not hurt!’ she giggled, gazing up at him in drunken awe. ‘You have an amazing chin.’

Settling her in a chair by
the big open fire, Dair insisted on getting her a brandy.

‘I’m not sure that’s such a good idea.’ Kat looked at Dawn who was lolling in the firelight and making coochy-coo noises at Dair’s dogs. Hearing the familiar click of a barrel cocking, their ears pricked. But Russ was holding the shotgun, not their master.

‘Put that down, Hedges!’ Dair barked from the bar.

‘Nice stock
work.’ Russ looked through the sights and swung round. All the earthmen at the bar ducked, terriers yapping. Only Dair remained upright, along with Mags, who was tutting at Russ from the brandy optic.

‘So, who is Seth?’ demanded Russ.

Dair stonewalled him. ‘I’m not at liberty to say.’

‘Nobody around here’s at liberty when their futures are dependent upon one landowner. Not
even you, Dair. We deserve to know the truth.’

Kat had seen enough: Russ would get himself into serious trouble if he carried on like that. Stepping in front of the gun, she put her hands on her hips and tilted her head to one side to show she wasn’t remotely afraid. ‘Stop this now, Russ.’

‘Yes, stop showing off,’ Dair said drily, and picked up the brandy to carry it to Dawn. ‘That
gun’s not loaded.’

‘Unlike your new boss.’ Dawn took the drink and swigged. Then she noticed Dair’s blank expression. ‘Loaded, as in filthy rich. Minted. Flush. Bling bling.’ Her eyes were starting to cross again.

Dair took the gun from Russ and broke it across his knee, then rested it back against the fire surround.

‘I love thishplace.’ Dawn watched him woozily. ‘Bring that
gun into a boozer in Watford and you’d have a SWAT team and Shky News camped outside before you could say “Mine’sapint.” I bet you have lockinshtill dawn, doncha?’

‘I’ll wait all night for Dawn if I have to.’ Dair settled opposite her. ‘Has anybody told you that you have the most amazing eyes?’

‘Oh, hell,’ muttered Kat, as Dawn drunkenly began on her life story and Russ stalked angrily
to the bar to refill drinks and get the latest on the church tower Googling. It was going to be a long night. She hoped Daphne had enough pages of the
Observer
to keep her going.

In the Carpathian Mountains, a lone rider was galloping along a snow-covered forest track at full pelt, drawing arrows from his hip quiver in swift succession to be fired from a small curling bow, each one sailing into its target with
a satisfying thwack.

Horse master Valentine Lupei watched grudgingly on the monitor as the camera tracked back, its dolly racing on its rails to stay ahead of the horse. The young actor was a natural in the saddle, he acknowledged. He knew the boy had ridden many stunts in the past – indeed, Dougie Everett’s transition from stuntman to actor was well documented – but his behaviour before
they’d started filming had been so obstreperous and spoilt that Valentine had imagined the boasts were exaggerated.

Furious that he’d not been allowed to bring his own horses with him to Romania, Dougie had refused the training sessions on offer with the team before filming began. If Valentine’s horses were top-quality stunt-trained animals who knew their jobs, Dougie claimed, he had no
need to practise. Instead he had flown to England to go to a party. Today was their first morning’s filming in the mountains and Dougie had left it to the last minute to arrive, transferring straight from the airport to the set, by which time Valentine was dressed in medieval leather livery, ready to double for him in the action scenes. This was among the biggest-budget movies Valentine had been
involved with, and he wanted to be in front of camera as much as possible.

Now denied his chance to shine, Valentine was sulking, especially as he could see the sheer, effortless talent on display. That was why the magazines all claimed that new Hollywood Brit-packer Dougie Everett was making horse-riding sexy. The number of men taking it up had reportedly shot up after the release of the
High Noon
remake in which Dougie had swaggered in and out of the saddle and seduced hottest starlet Kiki Nelson. Before that, he’d made jousting sexy in
Dark Knight
, an edgy medieval bloodbath combining beautifully framed violence with a grinding modern soundtrack and no perceptible plot. Now, starring in this fairytale fantasy adventure of horny hobgoblins and hot-lipped fairies, Dougie was making
mounted archery sexy, Valentine thought bitterly. No wonder the makeup girls were all wearing their lowest-cut tops.

Valentine had deliberately mounted him on a hot-headed dark chestnut Hispano Arab, which director Bradley agreed would look terrific on film contrasted against the snow. The horse was such a handful that usually only Valentine rode him, but his plan to embarrass the actor
had backfired as Dougie Everett now charged along the wide tree avenues as though he and the horse were on parallel tracks with the camera, arrows flying as straight as laser beams. Later, in a post-production edit suite, the small padded blue target would be CGIed into a giant, man-eating boar. The duo looked spectacular as they sliced past the black trunks like a moving, sparking flame.

‘Great horse!’ Dougie complimented Valentine, as they took a break to set up the next scene. ‘He’s a credit to you.’

‘Where you learn to shoot arrow like Hungarian?’ Valentine demanded.

‘Pony Club.’

The only person sulking more than Valentine was Dougie himself, and today the boar target was his nemesis: he was deriving a manifest pleasure from peppering it with
arrows.

Not only had the costume department dressed him from head to toe in leather, laces and buckles, so that he looked like a cross between Dick Whittington and a gimp, but his recent trip to England had not been a success. Caving into pressure, Dougie had agreed to attend his father Vaughan’s sixtieth birthday party. Having already drained the generous trust fund he’d inherited at twenty-one,
he was under family orders to step back into the Everett fold and marry, at which point – due to the archaic nature of the family fortune – he’d automatically acquire a huge stake in the London businesses and Northamptonshire farms. His father, who saw his son’s engagement to Kiki Nelson as a smokescreen and firmly believed this ‘acting lark’ was a passing fad, had lined him up with a buck-toothed
event-rider daughter of another local landowner, hoping to make a match. The girl had been hell, although Dougie had to admit the horse she’d lent him for a day out in the local hunt’s legendary Friday country had been a high-grade fix for any adrenalin junkie. When Vaughan, who was field-mastering, had invited his son up front to tackle a row of six freshly laid hedges, known as the Orthopaedics
because they claimed so many broken bones, Dougie had found himself smiling wider than he had in months. Keen for his country-loving son to manage the estate’s farming interests, Vaughan was forever dangling the carrots of horses and hunting in front of him, but Dougie felt no draw to the flat, wet corner of Northamptonshire where he’d spent his childhood listening to his parents argue
drunkenly during the interminable school holidays.

The trouble was he no longer craved the heat and buzz of Hollywood as he once had, and Kiki’s devotion to acting, the body beautiful and round-the-clock networking irritated him. Her need to talk, text, tweet and Instagram non-stop drove him mad, and the novelty of his A-list fiancée telling him how ‘instinctively and amazingly’ talented
he was had started to wear off when she’d tried to get him to accompany her to acting classes. Dougie had attended just one, at which track-suited participants ‘explored Stanislavski’ by wailing, groaning and crying like babies. His own cries – based largely upon a cow giving birth – had been praised for ‘profound emotionality’, but the experience had nonetheless left Dougie perplexed. Recognizing
some big names, he’d asked Kiki afterwards why successful actors would need lessons when they had agents turning film scripts away. She’d looked at him in amazement. ‘We’re refining our art, of course. You are a raw
diamond
of talent, a big stud with no angles to catch the light. We gotta cut you to train you, baby.’ That had made him think uncomfortably of his Friesian stunt horses being gelded
as three-year-old colts, a process known in the horse world as cutting.

Two weeks on location in a Romanian ski lodge had seemed an appealing escape from Kiki and the intensity of LA, although it had lost some if its appeal when he hadn’t been able to persuade the director to let him bring his own bow horse from England.

Dougie missed the team of horses he’d trained up from scratch
when he’d earned his living from stunt riding alone. On the drive back from his father’s weekend party to London, he’d stopped off in Buckinghamshire, where they were stabled. To his dismay, the yard was a total mess, the horses dirty, bored and under-exercised, and the work diary almost empty. His business partner, an affable ex-polo pro called Rupe, had been too busy partying to chase the public
displays and corporate work that paid the winter feed bills. When he’d left him in charge, Dougie had told him that the business couldn’t survive solely upon the more glamorous but infrequent commercial film and television work. Now there wasn’t enough in the bank to pay February’s wages and Rupe was trying to sell horses to raise cash.

Dougie had written him a cheque to buy time, but he
knew it couldn’t carry on like that. The reputation he’d spent years building for the team was in rapid decline. Worse, Dougie’s greatest equine ally, Harvey, the big Irish grey that had first accompanied him from the hunting field into stunt displays, was a bag of bones under his layers of winter rugs, wasting away because nobody had noticed that his old yellow teeth were in desperate need of attention.
The food was literally falling out of his mouth when he tried to chew it.

Instead of driving on to Stansted to catch his flight to Bratislava and meet the cast and crew at the location briefing, Dougie had spent his last day in the UK rattling around the M25 in a horsebox, taking Harvey to a veterinary hospital to have emergency dental treatment. Seeing his horses so neglected, Dougie felt
as if he’d abandoned his family. He was determined to sort the situation out.

He was also determined to do something about Kiki.

Now, taking a break in his trailer while the film team set up the next scene, Dougie pulled off the Dick Whittington boots and leather waistcoat in favour of sheepskin clogs and a thick fleece sweater, cranked up the fan heater and contemplated his next
move. The signal on his smart-phone was non-existent this high in the mountains so he didn’t have to wade through the barrage of messages from Kiki just yet. There was WiFi at the ski centre that cast and crew had commandeered as location HQ, and he’d have no excuse to ignore her when he got back there after the day’s shooting.

He knew he would have to break off the engagement soon. He
deeply regretted his rash marriage proposal, made after several lines of cocaine at the
High Noon
wrap party, followed by three hours of mind-blowing sex (Kiki didn’t do drugs, but she talked so much and screwed so dedicatedly that that hadn’t mattered). At the time, Dougie had believed that Kiki would be good for him, and in truth she probably was. She was an incredibly talented actress, passionate
about healthy living and humanitarian causes; her drive and zeal inspired him as much as her hard body thrilled him. Since they’d got together, she’d kept him in shape, helped fast-track him through the Hollywood social scene and kicked his lazy arse to make him take his natural gift for acting as seriously as he took his talent for horsemanship. Having grown up with a series of disapproving
stepmothers and disciplinarian nannies, Dougie was a dab hand at dealing with single-minded task-masters.

In turn, the man Kiki called her ‘easy-going English rogue’ charmed, calmed and challenged her. But he no longer wanted to be her dapper British husband, the latest must-have Hollywood accessory, like a piece of hand-made arm luggage. Travelling with her was great, but living with her
was hell. She wanted to unpack him, using psychotherapy, acting lessons and detox fasting, then rearrange him to get an Oscar winner. Dougie didn’t want to change: he was happy to travel light with somebody at his side and the distant horizon in his sights.

Unlike many of his commitment-phobic mates, Dougie couldn’t wait to marry, seeing a wife as a much-needed anchor and marriage as something
he could do better than his parents. In his teenage years he had been scandalized by his father’s many well-publicized affairs and his mother’s departure. Since then Vaughan had married a succession of beautiful but unchallenging blondes, several of whom had borne him more children, while Dougie’s embittered mother pickled herself in martinis and wizened away, a tummy tuck at a time, in the
South of France with a new husband.

Starved of affection and missing a strong role model, their son had rapidly turned into a hell-raising menace. He’d been expelled from school and later dropped out of the army, yet his birthright had propelled him through Society, where everyone knew a good marriage could be orchestrated and the future safeguarded. Dougie’s great charm and many friends
meant he had no shortage of takers. Thus he’d entered his first brief engagement at just twenty-four with sweet, country-loving Cressida, whose father had offered him a job in his merchant bank. This seemed to involve turning up in the City about once a month, but still proved too much for Dougie, as did staying faithful to poor Cressida. She had grown so obsessed with weddings that she’d put him
off marriage for several years. Dougie had never much wanted a wedding: he wanted a wife, a strong-willed, passionate one, to share his life with.

He’d found his career in stunt riding by chance, helping out a friend at a charity jousting tournament and discovering something for which he had an exceptional talent that suited his fearless, extrovert nature. On a whim, he’d decided to set
up his own team and, largely self-taught, had entertained audiences at country fairs and stately homes, at first using well-heeled connections, but soon earning a reputation as a breathtaking act to watch. It came so naturally to Dougie, combining his love of horses with high risk and showing off, that he wasn’t aware of exactly how good he was until television and advertising bookings began filling
his diary. Soon the film work was rolling in too. That was how he’d met Iris Devonshire, the child star of the
Ptolemy Finch
series, who was undeniably all woman by the time she shared a saddle, then a bed with Dougie in film five, and the crush she’d had on him had turned into a compelling, all-absorbing love affair. Dougie knew he wanted to marry Iris from their first night together in a London
hotel room. He’d adored her beauty, her innocence and her intelligence. She’d encouraged him to read and broaden his mind until the tabloids had reported his misdemeanours just before their wedding day. Dougie hadn’t been entirely innocent, but he’d been more faithful to Iris than he had to any other woman. Engagement broken, she’d fallen for another man, taken a break from acting and was now
in her final year at university, existing in a parallel universe. And he was engaged to Kiki.

In his more self-effacing moments, Dougie was big enough to admit that it was as much his talent for seducing leading ladies as for acting that had given him his biggest acting breaks – first Iris and now Kiki – although directors certainly seemed to love what he did on screen. The phenomenon baffled
him and had even been given its own nickname, the ‘Everett Effect’. To him, it was just learning lines and speaking them over and over again. And, having burned with the desire to be a big star since his first day on a movie set, he thought now that he preferred the adrenalin kick of riding stunts. His broken engagement had made him grow up and focus on what he really wanted from life. He was
thirty, and still very much wanted a wife. Losing Iris had hurt him deeply and made him question his behaviour, although not enough to change it.

He tried to concentrate on his script, running through the next scene. In this sequence he said just six words, all in made-up elf language that sounded like bringing up phlegm.

‘Fireauchi blanhunt muir bechan fin nathrot!’ He gave it an
enthusiastic shot, like a student ordering two beers in Stockholm.