‘You’re missing the point, Mother. Has the government thrust on binge drinking passed you by? You know how Dad loathed you drinking and gambling. Also, as we are struggling to support you, isn’t it rather selfish to squander your winnings so quickly?’
‘Your turn, Granny,’ said Poppy as Etta put down the receiver. ‘Why are you crying?’
At the end of October the weather turned windy and very cold. Leaves rained down. Houses were suddenly revealed behind newly bare trees. Willow spears choked Etta’s stream like shoals of goldfish. Desperate for a garden, she looked up shade-tolerant plants in a big book, hoping they’d grow in the shadow of her towering conifer hedge, and decided to dig a flower bed.
Returning from dropping off the children one freezing cold morning, she noticed Joey’s filthy white van parked in the road. On the back someone had written: ‘I wish my wife was as dirty as this.’ ‘Me too,’ someone had written underneath. And underneath that someone else had written: ‘Also available in white.’
Etta smiled, and looking over the wall saw Joey and Woody working on Valent’s land, blowing on their fingers, and later took them extremely welcome mugs of leek soup and bowls of black-berry crumble which she’d made for the children’s tea.
When in turn they put up bookshelves and hung the Munnings of the mare and foal and her flower paintings, she insisted on paying them twenty pounds. Soon they were popping in every day for a cup of tea and a gossip, Joey to talk about his wild children and his volatile marriage and Valent Edwards, Woody to confide how many tree surgeons were being forced out of business by Health and Safety.
‘I got so much work offered I could easily employ two or three assistants but I’d be clobbered by insurance. Four hundred pounds last year, four thousand this one. It’s a closed shop, the insurance companies employ a gang of inspectors to examine your equipment.’
‘Everyone wants to examine your equipment,’ mocked Joey.
‘Wherever he rolls up to sort trees, you see wives hanging out of the window.’
‘But the husbands always put you down,’ sighed Woody, ‘saying they’d do it themselves if they had the time. The real battle is views versus privacy. “My neighbour’s perfectly happy for you to cut down those trees,” they say, so you pick up your axe, then the neighbour rolls up with a shotgun.’
‘No cream?’ joked Joey, the morning Etta provided hot scones and home-made bramble jelly. As she got a carton of cream out of the fridge, Woody patted his flat stomach: ‘We’ll have to get out of our jeans into elasticated waistbands soon,’ he teased.
Sitting at the table in Etta’s dark kitchen, he confessed he felt hellishly guilty about planting the mature hedge that blotted out her sunlight.
‘Valent insisted to please Bonny Richards, and when he asks, you jump. I would have planted hawthorn or beech, but I assumed you’d be an old cow like Romy. Sorry, Etta.’
‘Romy’s always shouting at the lads for making a noise drillin’ or hammerin’,’ grumbled Joey. ‘Then she went ballistic when they wolf-whistled at her in a tight jumper. Affront to her dignity, she said.’ Joey laughed. ‘Front was the operative word. She made Martin ring up Valent and complain. Valent took no notice.’
‘Bonny Richards doesn’t want anyone spying on her,’ explained Woody. ‘Journalists were renting houses all round her place in London. You don’t look like a member of the paparazzi, Etta, although I’m not sure I’d trust that Dora.’
As the dark, merry eyes of Joey, who’d been given half the
Daily
Mail
’s fee by Dora, met Etta’s, they shifted.
‘What’s Bonny like?’ asked Etta.
‘Bit skinny for me, likes to preserve a respectable image but covered plenty of sheet miles in her time,’ said Joey. ‘She’s tryin’ to improve Valent. “If you stop droppin’ your haitches, I’ll drop my knickers” sort of thing. She thinks he’s rough and she hates the country, so Valent’s trying to tempt her with the house. God, these are good.’ Joey reached out for a third scone.
‘Finish them,’ cried a delighted Etta – it was such heaven to cook for people who liked her food. ‘When’s Valent moving in?’
‘Depends on her, probably end of next year. He paid four mil, done up proper it could go for 12 mil. Reassures the locals if a lovely ’ouse is restored, improves the whole village, puts everyone’s prices up.’
‘Yours included,’ said Woody, who lived with his mother on the Salix Estate.
‘I like your house, Joey,’ said Etta. ‘Nice and roomy for all your children.’
‘Willowwood don’t think so. Direct Debbie and Phoebe and Toby are petrified Woody’s going to chop down trees round it so they’d ’ave to look at something common that ruins their rural idyll.’ Joey laughed fatly and unrepentantly.
Woody put down the
Racing Post
and picked up Etta’s garden plan.
‘Those are the plants – foxgloves, hostas, Solomon’s seal, ferns – I’m hoping to put in,’ she explained.
‘Shade-tolerant.’ Woody shook his head. ‘I’m sorry, Etta. I’ll dig out a flower bed for you and bring you some manure from the stable.’
‘Oh, how kind! Dora was telling me about your syndicate. I’m so pleased you saved Not for Crowe.’
‘You’ll have to come and see him race, or we’ll bring him over to see you. He never stops eating, he’d love your cakes. Syndicate’s cheap in the summer. He’s been outside, now he’s got to come in and go racing.’
Later they showed Etta a video of Not for Crowe and Family Dog, who had a broad, cheerful face and very short legs. Both horses looked as though they could easily get overtaken by the donkeys at Grange-over-Sands.
One evening, Niall Forbes the vicar, slim, blond and baby-faced (fractionally aged by wearing spectacles), dropped in to welcome her. ‘I do hope you are a worshipper, Mrs Bancroft,’ he said, in a high, fluting voice, and then asked Etta if she was straight yet.
You’re certainly not, thought Etta, as Niall downed four glasses of sherry. Under Etta’s sweet, sympathetic gaze, he tearfully confessed that last week he’d broken the news that he was gay to his parents.
‘They were so good about it. But after I’d gone to bed, I couldn’t sleep and came down for a cuppa and found my father crying his eyes out in the study. I wanted to hug him, but felt it might make him uncomfortable.’
‘You poor boy,’ said Etta. ‘Why don’t you send them a card, just telling them how much you love them and what wonderful parents they’ve been. Parents always think it’s their fault.’
‘I’ll try.’ Niall wiped his reddened eyes. ‘I must go,’ then, as the light from the opened door fell on the rich brown turned earth: ‘I see you’ve been gardening.’
‘Woody’s been so kind, digging up this bed for me.’
‘Oh Woody!’ The vicar’s sad face lit up. ‘Such a nice chap. I saw him swinging round the trees in his harness and asked him to
trim my hedge, enough to let in some light but not to allow Debbie Cunliffe to peer in. Sorry, that was dreadfully unchristian, but I expect you know what I mean.’
‘I certainly do.’ The horrible sneak.
‘Honestly, you couldn’t see where Woody had trimmed it, such a nice chap. God bless you, Etta, see you in church,’ said Niall, and nearly falling over a crate of empty milk bottles he stumbled off into the night.
Across the valley, Etta could hear a horse neighing. She wondered if it was Stop Preston, and wished she could visit Marius’s yard to thank him for the pale blue jersey she’d just been able to afford, despite squandering the rest of her winnings on boozing in the Fox. Going inside, she hastily hid the empty sherry bottle in the bin in case a spying Romy accused her of drinking alone.
Etta’s heart lifted every time she saw Harvey-Holden’s and Marius’s horses clattering through the village, or being taught to jump fences and hurdles. Often she watched Olivia Oakridge bumping over the fields on her quad bike, bringing hay to horses that were still turned out. Invariably a troupe of horses would follow the bike, clearly they loved her.
There was lots of gossip about Marius. The weather had been awful and he couldn’t afford to put in an all-weather gallop, Woody and Joey told Etta. Jase the farrier had also overheard Marius and Olivia rowing.
‘Olivia’s jogging a lot, she ought to be jogging horizontally on top of Marius,’ said Joey.
Trixie had longed to get a holiday job with Marius, but even though Shade Murchieson, whom she’d met at her grandfather’s funeral, had put in a good word, Marius had told her there were no vacancies.
‘He hasn’t got any spare cash,’ reported Jase. ‘He’s laying off staff and acting as his own travelling head lad. He had to lead his horses up himself at Bangor the other day. If he drops his prices any more, we’ll be able to send Not for Crowe there.’
Whenever she drove through the village, Etta hoped to catch a glimpse of Seth and Corinna or Valent and Bonny or even Lester Bolton the porn millionaire and his chav wife. But none of them showed up. She was absolutely shattered looking after Poppy and Drummond, trying to find things for them to do. Drummond was even bored when she took him to see the sharks in the aquarium in Bristol, complaining they looked much smaller than they did on television.
He had an answer for everything. When Etta urged him to eat up his carrots because they’d help him see in the dark, Drummond replied that he would rather have a torch.
One afternoon, desperate for a horse-fix, Etta took Poppy for a walk along the top road towards Ralph Harvey-Holden’s yard. As they admired some sheep in a field, Poppy took Etta’s hand and asked, ‘Is it black nose day?’
A slight breeze was unleashing more leaves.
‘Every time you catch one, you get a happy day,’ said Etta.
Soon she and Poppy were racing round shrieking with excitement. Belting after a spiralling olive-green ash frond, Etta nearly fell over a quad bike tucked into the side of the road. On it, surprisingly far from home, was Olivia Oakridge talking into a mobile: ‘Thank God we got away with it this time.’
In front of her on the bike, clutching the handles, was a child with her mother’s dark auburn hair and innocent, kittenish blue eyes. Etta thought how pretty they both were. As Olivia switched off her mobile, saying she had to come up here to get a signal, she appeared overflowing with happiness, which seemed at variance with her husband’s lack of form. Perhaps they’d had a winner.
‘You must be Mrs Bancroft. Dora’s told me about you and your spectacular win on Preston, and you must be Poppy. This is India, she goes to the same school as you. You must get Granny to bring you over to see the horses.’
Profoundly grateful for something to fill an afternoon, Etta did just that the following day and it was a huge success. Marius was at the races, so everything was much more relaxed.
‘Pooh, what a stink,’ complained a horrified Drummond when confronted by the muck heap, but he was soon caught up watching the horses being brushed down, skipped out and watered and in helping the stable lads take round hay nets and feed buckets.
India bore Poppy off to meet Horace, her skewbald Shetland pony, who refused to move an inch until he’d been given several whacks. Poppy was even more excited when Josh, a merry-eyed, red-headed stable lad often seen riding or driving much too fast through Willowwood, lifted her up for a ride in front of him on Oh My Goodness.
Etta was in heaven, so busy hugging the horses and patting the swarming pack of lurchers and Jack Russells that she hardly noticed how run-down everything was. Paint was bubbling and peeling, railings were chewed, doors gnawed and most of the horses wore hand-me-down rugs.
She was enchanted to meet Stop Preston, whose huge blaze was splashed over his face like whitewash. He was delighted to eat Etta’s carrots and a whole packet of Polos. Graciously receiving her words of gratitude, he kept nudging her.
‘As if butter wouldn’t melt in his mouth,’ called out Olivia, arms full of exercise rugs she’d just taken down from the washing line. ‘He’ll probably refuse to go down to the start next time.’
Ilkley Hall, on the other hand, flattened his black ears and darted his teeth at Etta.
‘He’s missing Collie, our head lad, who’s gone to the races with Marius. Look, you can see your house across the valley.’
Glancing across, Etta was fascinated to see the cricket pitch, the village green, Willowwood Hall, more of Badger’s Court than from her own garden, and the high street, a gleaming parting up the centre.
Oh dear, like a star in a haze of willows, the colour of French mustard now their leaves had gone, a light was shining in Etta’s bungalow.
‘Mrs Travis-Lock will slap your wrists,’ said Olivia. ‘She’s an old duck really, just bossy.’
‘What a beautiful valley,’ sighed Etta as they looked over yellowing fields falling down to the river.
‘In the old days trees were cut down so you could see your enemies coming. Marius had to gouge a gallop out of the hillside. It’s very steep but it gets the horses fit, and we’ve got a lot of turnout area. It’s also very exposed, which hardens the horses – and their trainer,’ said Olivia cryptically.
‘They lead a four-star life, our horses,’ she went on slightly defensively. ‘We don’t have holidays, the horses do. Marius is up at five and out in the yard at ten o’clock, putting on another rug, giving them some more hay. Come and have some tea.’
‘Have you got time?’