Lots of Love Read online

  It was barely midday, but the sweltering heat made beer the kiss of life. ‘Perfection,’ she gasped happily, after she’d swallowed a draught. She cocked her head and looked at him, taking in the mercury eyes and the sharp, clever features that worked together absurdly well. ‘You really are taking this promise seriously, aren’t you?’

  He leaned back against the tractor and tapped the can with his finger. ‘I’m glad you bought it . . . even if you were coerced by my mother. Sorry about that.’

  ‘It was worth it for this.’ Ellen raised her beer and patted the bonnet of the little tractor. ‘If the others had known they’d get this much value for money, they’d all have been bidding last weekend.’

  ‘Oh, no.’ He shook his head. ‘Believe me, I am bloody glad it was you who bought it,’ the silver eyes slid away and creased against the sun, ‘because you are the only one in this village who would not use this opportunity to wish me dead three times over.’

  ‘That depends how well you cut the lawn.’

  He laughed, toasting her with his can. ‘I like you. You’re seriously disrespectful.’

  She laughed too. ‘Why should I respect you? Because you’re the lord of the manor?’

  ‘Surely Hunter told you?’ He dropped his voice. ‘I am the devil.’

  She drank some more beer and ran a hand round her sweaty neck. ‘Is that why it’s so hot around here?’

  ‘I’ve had the brimstone on the hob all week.’

  Together they sagged companionably against the hot flank of the tractor, soaking in a moment’s sun and relaxation as they geared up for another gardening onslaught.

  And that was when it hit Ellen. She liked Spurs Belling – on instinct, without questioning it at all. The fear that jabbed fingers through her ribs when she looked at him wasn’t the terror that gripped the village, the old unhealed wounds that incensed Pheely, Hunter and the others. She had no reason to feel that. The fear she experienced – and still felt now – was the same exhilarating, freefall fear she had once craved as a daily fix. It was a recurring fear, habitual and addictive, and one that she had long fought to control. It was a fear that Richard had accused her of losing touch with. He’d said that her inability to recognise it would kill her.

  Looking at Spurs, she knew Richard was wrong, as she’d told him so many times. It wasn’t the fear she had lost touch with: it was her ability to feel it with him any more. Being with Richard stopped her fearing anything, and she craved that fear – pushing herself to greater and greater danger as she strived to feel it. Each encounter with Spurs clamped her chest in a tight vice of apprehension, like balancing on a high cliff preparing to jump into the ocean. But she knew that she had to keep her boots on and stand still. Last night with Lloyd had proved just how ill-prepared she was to test the water, and his salty shallows were barely lukewarm. Spurs’ deep fathoms boiled like sulphur.

  Thirteen years with Richard and their earthy mutual friends had left Ellen fearless when it came to men, sport and danger. It was her own libido that terrified her. Naïve, undermined, inexperienced and barely used, it sometimes tried to kick its way out of her, aiming at nothing in particular and destined, she was certain, to cause chaos. She fought to keep it rigidly under control.

  ‘Seems a shame to tame it,’ Spurs murmured, beside her.

  Ellen looked at him in alarm, certain that he had read her thoughts, then saw with relief that he was looking across the garden.

  ‘I know – I prefer it like this to the way it was before,’ she agreed. ‘But I don’t live here. I’m just passing through.’

  ‘Lucky you.’ He crunched his beer can and threw it into the trailer.

  ‘I dug out a gardening book,’ she told him, and fetched Alan Titchmarsh from the long grass. ‘Not sure if it’ll be much help – I gave up after three pages on cold frames.’

  He took it, flipped a few pages, then tossed it over his shoulder. ‘Two rules: we stop every hour for a beer and a chat, and we don’t kill anything except weeds and time together, okay?’

  ‘Sure.’ She tried to hide the width of her smile and reached for her gloves.

  About to head back to the tractor, Spurs stopped. ‘Why does your dog have to be on a tether?’

  ‘Hunter has her under death threat.’

  ‘I know the feeling.’ He walked over to Snorkel. ‘Can she ride with me if I keep an eye on her?’

  Ellen glanced at the fence that marked Snorkel’s safety zone. She had already lost one pet to God knows where, although she was far more certain of Fins’ return than of the collie making it back if she crossed the demarcation zone to her beloved chickens.

  ‘Stupid idea.’ Spurs nodded.

  ‘No – it’s okay,’ Ellen looked across at poor Snorkel, curled up in a tight ball of misery by the dovecote. ‘I trust you.’

  ‘You do?’ The silver eyes burned into hers and she wondered if she’d misjudged him. Then it struck her that Spurs was so accustomed to being mistrusted that he hadn’t been able to believe his ears.

  ‘I trust you,’ she repeated.

  He stooped to untie the dog, then cupped her clown face in his hands and planted a kiss on her nose. Snorkel licked his cheek with slavish gratitude. Don’t get too keen, Ellen warned her silently. He’s not the faithful type.

  Soon Joni Mitchell was ringing through the garden on Ellen’s battered old stereo, almost totally drowned by the drone of Spurs racing through the long grass on his small-scale combine harvester, an ecstatic Snorkel balanced between his knees and the handlebars, ears inside out as she threw back her head and barked. ‘One man went to mow, went to mow a meadow!’ he yelled tunelessly, waving at Ellen as he passed.

  She breathed in the scent of freshly cut grass, which was perhaps the only smell, besides that of the sea, that could make her shudder with uncontrollable happiness the moment it hit her nose.

  ‘“Oh, you are in my blood like holy wine,”’ she sang along to the tape, pulling out ground elder, goose grass and bindweed, ‘“you taste so bitter and so sweet.”’ She’d always been a Joni fan, and the tape was one of a little cluster of long-neglected listening fodder from her student days that she had rediscovered during the rushed, messy division of possessions that had taken place at the Shack before they left it for ever.

  ‘“Oh, I could drink a case of you, darling,”’ she sang, closing her eyes and thinking about the times she had played it and thought of Richard, more than a decade earlier, ‘“and I’d still be on my feet. Oh, I would still be on my feet.”’ She heaved at a huge dock. ‘So that I could kick your arse,’ she added, falling over backwards with the effort of uprooting it. Lying where she’d landed, she stared at the sky.

  ‘One man went to mow . . .’ The engine spluttered past, covering her in grass clippings.

  Of course, the track entitled ‘The Last Time I Saw Richard’ was the one playing when Spurs cut the engine on the little APV and sauntered over for their first break. In an instant the song went from barely audible to deafening, its lyrics ripping through the sultry lunchtime making weekenders look up from their barbecues; a snoozing Hunter woke up and let off an accidental shot from his rifle.

  Spurs just laughed as Ellen leaped for the volume control.

  ‘You like Joni Mitchell?’ He dipped into the chill box and pulled out two cans.

  She shrugged. ‘It makes a change from Dead Man’s Curve, the Bambi Killers and other quality surf bands.’

  ‘And I thought it was still the Beach Boys.’ He settled on the painted bench beside the bed she was weeding.

  ‘Only if you’re sixty and live in Hawaii.’ She eased herself off her knees and joined him. ‘Christ, it’s hot.’

  ‘Not as hot as Hawaii.’ Spurs looked up at the sky. ‘Ever been?’

  ‘Not yet. We surfed in Europe mostly – and a few weeks in South America some years, if there was any money left.’ She stared at the sky too, looking for the storm that never came.

  ‘You’ve done it for a while, then? I sp
otted the boards in the barn.’

  ‘Almost a decade, although just lately I’ve been more into kite-surfing – the chute’s still in the car.’ She watched a light aircraft circling high overhead. ‘Before that it was scuba-diving, and before that parachuting. I loved that, but . . .’ She stopped. Richard had hated it. He’d never been as brave as she, had never wanted to go up again and again, to go higher and faster, or to base jump – the ultimate dare.

  ‘You couldn’t decide whether you wanted to be over the sea or under it?’ Spurs suggested.

  ‘Something like that,’ she murmured, watching a white chalkmark on the china blue sky. She’d always thought of Richard as her beloved sea – stormy, tidal, ruled by the moon. She was the breeze that ruffled it, the gale that tormented it and the still warmth that calmed it – as light as air and ruled by the sun. ‘See that plane there? Eight years ago, all I’d have thought about was jumping out of it.’

  ‘Eight years ago I felt the same way.’ He took a swig of beer. ‘Only I wasn’t too bothered about the parachute.’

  They sat in silence for a while, letting the sweat from hard work cool a little, enjoying the silence. Ellen longed to ask why his life had got so bad, but she couldn’t break the companionable spell.

  ‘I’ll be about another half an hour on the lawn and then I can top the paddock,’ he said eventually, putting his can in the shade beneath the bench. ‘The cuttings there can just be left, but I’ll have to rake all this lot up later.’

  ‘I can do that as you go along,’ she offered, stretching her arms behind her neck and turning to smile at him. ‘I could use a break from weeding.’

  ‘It’s bloody hard work.’

  ‘I’m bloody hard enough.’ She grinned.

  ‘I’ll bet.’

  Just for a moment his eyes traced the stretch of brown belly beside him before the silver gaze flicked away and he stood up to unclip Snorkel again.

  Suddenly Ellen felt hotter than ever, the sweat now trickling between excited goosebumps. She pressed her lower arms to her burning cheeks and crushed the feeling down.

  Together, she and Spurs worked through the hottest hours of the day in a haze of grass seed, flying cuttings and exhaust fumes. As he towed the big agricultural topper over the contours of the Goose Cottage lawn and then the paddock, Ellen followed behind with a rake, filling the barrow again and again before trundling it to an ever-growing pile beside the field gate. It was tough work, but after endless sweaty journeys, the wide stretches of grass looked civilised again, robbed of their green woolly mammoth pelt. It was still far from Hunter Gardner’s trim snooker-baize lawn that ran alongside it, but it was amazing progress. By the time Spurs switched off the engine, all the Goose Cottage land had undergone a thorough buzz-cut.

  ‘Not bad, huh?’ he called to Ellen.

  ‘Wow.’ She spun around to look. ‘Wow.’

  She couldn’t resist it. She lay down beside the field gate at the top of the long sloping paddock and pushed herself off. Shrieking with laughter, she rolled all the way to the bottom, loose grass sticking to her sweaty arms and legs, face and belly. Snorkel chased her, barking her head off and divebombing Ellen’s spinning legs.

  Finally coming to a halt by the thick hedge at the bottom, Ellen splatted her arms and legs back against the scratchy grass, stared up at the sky and sighed happily.

  A shadow fell over her. ‘Idiot.’ Spurs’ silhouette was all white smile and curly hair. ‘Do you know how many nettle cuttings you’ve just rolled over?’

  ‘I’m starting to guess.’ She lifted her now burning legs and winced. ‘Hell, it was worth it.’

  The shadow only just eclipsed the sun, so that the blinding light flashed on and off her face.

  ‘Hell’s never worth it.’

  Ellen squinted into the dancing sun and shadow. ‘This is heaven.’

  She could just make out the white teeth smiling.

  ‘Are you hungry?’ she asked.

  ‘Starved.’ The shadow moved away.

  ‘I’ll fix some food.’

  While he started up the brush cutter and began to attack the areas he couldn’t get to with the cumbersome topper, Ellen headed back to the house to look through the fridge for something she could offer by way of late lunch. Her staple supplies of sliced bread, baked beans and jam hardly seemed adequate to refuel them after such an energetic morning. She glanced out of the window to watch Spurs moving around an old apple tree, the big brush cutter strapped to his shoulders for stability, so that he appeared to be dancing an old-fashioned waltz with it. He was wearing the goggles, his hair dripping with sweat and full of grass seed, his T-shirt sticking to those broad shoulders and sinewy chest. He definitely needed rocket fuel.

  She grabbed her purse and was about to set off for the village shop when she caught sight of herself in the hall mirror. Her own T-shirt was see-through with sweat and covered in soil and grass stains, her hair stood on end and a huge green mark streaked her forehead. Her legs and arms were covered with nettle rash.

  She nipped into the bootroom, pulled off her top and threw it into the machine, then leaned over the sink to wash her face, neck and arms in cold water. Then, using a tea-towel to dry herself, she pulled a fresh T-shirt from the top of the pile of clothes she’d washed the day before and dragged it over her head.

  It was only when she rattled one ear to release a few stray drops of water that she noticed she couldn’t hear the brush cutter’s engine. She spun round to find Spurs standing on the quarry tiles behind her, the goggles on top of his head and his T-shirt in his hands.

  ‘Now I know where I’ve seen you before.’ He smiled easily, totally unflustered, as though women took off their tops around him all the time. ‘I remember that tattoo.’

  Suddenly Ellen flushed red hot as something clicked in her memory. ‘It was you driving past the day I was parked near Hillcote?’ She brazened it out, forcing a carefree smile in return. ‘I hope I didn’t frighten the horses.’

  ‘You certainly shocked my mother.’ He headed past her, chucking his T-shirt into the Belfast sink and reaching for the taps. ‘She almost drove into a hedge.’

  ‘Does she know it was me?’

  ‘I doubt it.’ He pulled off the goggles and tipped his head under the cold tap. ‘She didn’t take as much notice of the . . . details as I did.’

  ‘I’m going to buy lunch from the shop.’ Ellen averted her gaze from his broad, bare back. Her body was doing its hot goosebump thing again.

  ‘Great.’ He was twisting his head beneath the cool flood, letting the water run through the thick curls, over his face and down his freckled neck.

  ‘D’you want to come along and choose something?’

  ‘No – that Lily woman presses the panic button if I so much as read a postcard in the window,’ he muttered. ‘I’ll keep Snorkel entertained, if that’s okay.’ One silver eye opened beneath the cool waterfall and he eyed her over a speckled shoulder.

  It was another trust moment, Ellen realised. He was seeing whether she had enough faith in him to leave him alone in the house. Right now, she was more than happy to. She felt far safer at the prospect of dashing away than staying in such close proximity with him and her raging goosebumps a moment longer.

  Joel was alone behind the counter, and lifted his arms in praise when he saw her. ‘Ellen! Hi! You okay there? Lily was real concerned that Dot Wyck mighta hurt you yesterday – she came on real strong out there, huh?’

  ‘No, I’m fine,’ she assured him, smiling politely at a gaggle of tourists gawping at her from behind the Oddlode pottery mug and plate display. ‘Nothing I can’t handle. Sorry you had to lock the doors.’

  ‘Lily likes to play it safe.’ He winked. ‘You and the old lady had a difference of opinion, huh?’

  ‘Something like that.’ She headed for the cool cabinets, wishing the altercation hadn’t been quite so public.

  When Joel rang up her purchases his eyebrows lifted comically. ‘You sure got your appetite
back. We’ve been worried about you – nothing but bread and beans all week. Your dog eats better. It’s good to see you buying some decent food.’

  Ellen hoped the Oddlode shopkeepers didn’t discuss her consumption of loo roll and tampons in quite the same depth.

  She selected her free ice-cream on the way out – now a standard extra, if Joel was serving – and crossed the lane to eat it on Bevis’s bench, wondering guiltily as she did so whether she should have bought one for Spurs.

  ‘Am I really mean?’ she asked the bench, as she licked the Zoom, which was already melting down her wrists in multicoloured rivulets.

  A caterpillar landed on the banana layer.

  ‘I guess you’re right,’ Ellen apologised, picking it off. ‘I’ll get him one tomorrow if he comes back, I promise. I hope he comes back.’

  Three caterpillars rained down.

  Ellen glanced up at the dark canopy overhead. Then she closed her eyes and thought about her wish. There were so many better things she could have wished for, yet today had been by far the happiest since she had arrived in Oddlode, and it was barely half-way through. That, now she thought about it, was the best thing she could wish for. A truly happy day. There had been precious few in recent months.

  ‘Am I wrong to like him?’ she asked Bevis, patting his warm wooden arms. ‘I don’t think he’s so bad.’ Looking down through the slats of the bench beside her, she saw a cluster of daisies and picked one.

  ‘Bad – good – bad – good.’ She pulled away the petals, aware that she was behaving like a lovesick teenager. She crumpled the daisy between her fingers before she could finish and slapped her hot cheeks with her hands to pull herself together.

  When she returned Spurs was stretched out on the pale, tufty lawn. Alan Titchmarsh lay open on his face to shade it and Snorkel lay companionably alongside him, tethered to the bench.

  Leaving them to their well-earned nap, Ellen carried the food into the house and started to lay it out – fresh fat baguettes, meats and cheeses, pâtés and olives, and a bag of mixed salad. It was about as good as her catering ever got. She put it all on to a tray with a jug of water and carried it out to the table at the back of the house. Then, spotting that the table and chairs were covered with green mould and that Hunter Gardner was monitoring her every move through his bins, she carried it all in again, crossing back through the cool house and emerging at the front to put it on the small table where Theo liked to catch the morning sun. Now almost in shadow, it was probably a better spot anyway, even though it was overlooked by the lane.