Chapter 18
Standing at the side of the road in the bright morning sunshine, Rick stared at an olive-green bath, a broken shower door, rusting pipework and shattered tiles. They weren’t there when he’d left the barn for a walk. Yet now, on his return, here they were. It just showed what a city mentality he had that when he thought of the country, he pictured green fields and neat hedgerows, not fly-tipped bathroom suites chucked in ditches.
Puzzled, but not unduly concerned, he walked on. There was a spring in his step that had been missing for quite some time. An afternoon spent playing video games followed by a long walk in the fresh air had done him some good. Hence, he was out again today. Perhaps Gita had a point about him needing a holiday. He wouldn’t go so far as to say that he was feeling positive about his situation, but the heavy shroud of desperation had lifted a fraction. Things were still dire. And they were going to get worse. But the GMC hadn’t struck him off. And his medical decisions had been deemed sound. He would focus on those two pieces of good news and deal with the other crap later.
A rhythmic thumping, interspersed with a lot of cursing coming from the front garden of the farmhouse, caught his attention. Peering through the beech hedge, he could see Beth wielding a sledgehammer.
Thump.
Thump, thump.
Thump.
She paused for breath, wiping a forearm across her brow.
Thump, thump.
Then she said something unintelligible and swung the sledgehammer again, slamming it down onto a metal pole.
Thump.
Rick was about to leave her to it, when she yelled, ‘Stupid bloody thing. Just go in, damn you.’ She swung the hammer even higher, bringing it down with a force that had minimal effect on the anchor but maximum impact on the tool itself. The shaft splintered and the hammer head bounced off, straight through the side of the greenhouse.
Broken glass tinkled to the ground.
‘Oh no.’ Beth dropped the remains of the handle and covered her face with her hands. ‘Please no. No, no, no, no, no.’ Her shoulders started to shake.
Rick stood rooted to the spot. No way was he risking another shouty encounter. He’d only just recovered from the last one. But… his warrior queen was crying. He hated people getting upset. Seeing Beth cry tore at his heart.
A grey donkey ambled over and nudged her in the stomach until she dropped her hands.
‘Pablo!’ she said, between sniffs. ‘You’re supposed to be out the back.’ Wiping the heel of one hand across her eyes, she dragged out a hankie and blew her nose, before fondling the donkey’s ears.
‘Know what, Pablo?’ she said, slinging an arm around the animal’s neck. ‘Daisy’s right, I am a stupid cow. But don’t tell her I said so. And poor Jack. What must he be thinking?’ She waved a hand at the metal post. ‘I don’t know what to do. If I can’t even put this stupid thing together, how can I sort anything else?’ She released the donkey. ‘Maybe I should just give up.’
Rick watched Beth and the donkey disappear together around the side of the house.
She sounded utterly defeated, a million miles from the impressive, if scary, woman he’d seen on previous occasions. The impulse to help her was overwhelming, even though she’d been so angry with him. It would be sensible to keep his head down. But where Beth was concerned, Rick didn’t want to be sensible. He squinted through the hedge. What exactly is she doing anyway? Squeezing through a small gap, he went over for a closer look. Interesting. Looks simple enough. Like a big 3D jigsaw . He pulled out the anchor that had given Beth so much trouble. He re-sited it several inches to the left, where the ground wasn’t so solid, and went in search of some sort of mallet from Beth’s shed to drive it into place. He found other useful tools there, too, and, within half an hour, had almost completely assembled the plastic tunnel. There was one small section remaining. An essential piece of equipment was missing, but there might be something he could adapt to fit in one of Charlie’s many sheds. He forced his way back through the hedge and jogged down the track, surprised to see a tractor and small trailer parked across the entrance to his drive.
Beth was leaning on a gatepost, watching a short, wiry man unload hay bales to form a wall that completely blocked Rick’s car in. A wave of panic crawled up Rick’s chest. If reporters arrived, he might have to make a run for it. He needed his car. The tractor engine roared back to life and the wiry man gave Beth a cheerful wave before steering the vast machine down the track towards Rick.
‘Wait. Stop.’ Rick flapped an arm to get the driver’s attention.
The man’s crumpled, weather-beaten face broke into a broad grin. He waved back but didn’t stop.
Blast.
Beth spotted him running towards her and took a step towards him. ‘Hi. Listen, I wanted to apolo—’
‘You can’t leave that there,’ Rick gasped, pointing at the hay.
‘Oh, that’s not for me.’
‘Well, it’s not mine, is it? And it’s blocking my car in.’
Beth’s face fell. ‘Do you need your car, right this minute?’
‘No, but… If it’s not yours and it’s not mine, why is it here? Oh!’ A large, brightly coloured bird glided in to land on the fence near Rick’s hand. Not terribly comfortable around large birds having been dive-bombed as a child by a seagull after his ice cream, he took a hasty step back. ‘What the—?’
‘I can ask Jack to move it when he gets home.’
‘So, it is yours, I… Oh heck!’ He jumped as two more birds landed near his feet.
‘They’re only pheasants. They won’t hurt you. And, for the record, the hay is definitely yours. It’s for the llampaccas. Grass isn’t enough this time of year. It needs supplementing. They need saltlicks, too.’
What was she taking about? More birds back-winged overhead, dropping like fat, feathered missiles, followed by a dozen more. The air filled with squawks and fluttering. Having landed, each bird shook tail and wing feathers into place and set about pecking at the ground. Rick stared at them in amazement. ‘What on earth is going on?’
‘It is the final shoot.’
‘The final shoot? I don’t understand.’
‘The final pheasant shoot of the season.’
‘And…?’
‘It’s like this. The majority of the land around here, apart from yours and mine, is part of Lord Astley’s estate. His staff run shooting parties throughout the autumn and early winter months. But the guns can only legally aim for birds that are on or over estate land.’
‘Are you telling me these birds are here because they know they won’t be shot?’
She gave him the sort of smile a teacher might give a dim-witted student who had finally understood something. ‘Pretty much. I know it sounds far-fetched, but I’m telling you, that’s what’s going on here. Please don’t stress. They’ll all disappear as soon as the shoot is over.’
‘This place is insane.’
‘No more than anywhere else. And if you think the birds are bad, you just wait. This whole place will be swarming with people soon.’
A trickle of icy alarm ran down Rick’s spine. Beth was still speaking, but he couldn’t hear what she was saying over the whooshing of blood in his ears. He glanced back up the lane, fully expecting to see a TV van stuffed with rampaging paparazzi bearing down on him.
‘Did you call them? Oh my god, you did, didn’t you? Thanks a bunch. Kick me while I’m down, why don’t you?’
Dizzy with panic and desperate to get indoors before he did something stupid like faint, Rick hopped through the shifting mass of feathered bodies littering the yard as fast as he could.