A Country Affair (6 page)

“I see.” By this time, Scott had his hand in the cow’s uterus and Mrs. Parsons had stopped massaging him.

“I’ll go put the kettle on, shall I?”

There were some farms where Scott could enjoy a mug of tea sitting at the kitchen table talking farming, and there were some where he couldn’t. Applegate Farm came into the latter category. When he’d been offered tea the first time after a long, cold wait for a calf to arrive, he’d accepted and eagerly gone inside to get warm, but after the shock of seeing their filthy kitchen and the indescribable chaos that reigned in there, he had vowed he’d die of hypothermia before entering that kitchen again.

“No, thanks, Mrs. Parsons. I’ve more calls this morning than I can cope with. I’ll just take a couple of blood samples and give Zinnia an antibiotic, and then I’ll be away.”

“I’m real disappointed you won’t have a cuppa. I made cherry cake yesterday and there’s a slice left. Let me put it in a bag and you can take it home to finish your lunch with. Won’t be a minute.”

“She should be all right now, Phil. Any ideas why this happened?”

Phil shook his head. “None. Just one of them things.”

“I’ve said this before and I’ve got to say it again: This place needs cleaning up. Milk produced here! God help us! No wonder Milkmarque says you don’t reach its hygiene standards and refuses to collect.”

“There’s plenty of people’ll buy my milk. Don’t need no puffed-up officials, I don’t.”

Scott held up his hand to silence him. “Say no more; I don’t want to know. Right. But it’s a disgrace. A complete disgrace. If I mention it in the right quarter, you’ll be in deep trouble, so make sure when I come back the day after tomorrow to see Zinnia that you’ve made a start. No, more than a start, actually done it. The cow barn, the yard, everywhere. Right?”

“I heard.” Phil sniffed his disgust and turned on his heel back into the barn.

Hoping to escape before Mrs. Parsons came out of the farmhouse with his cherry cake, Scott headed straight through the yard, out of the gate and across the farm track to where he’d left his vehicle. He had stored his equipment and stripped off his protective clothing when she bellowed from the farmhouse doorway, “Scott! Your cake! Here!” Mrs. Parsons held up a brown paper bag, making no attempt to walk across to him. There was nothing for it: Politeness and good client relations demanded that he walk over to get it. Taking a moment to replace his Wellingtons, Scott crossed the farm track and slurped his way over to the house. The route from the barn to the track he knew, but he’d never walked from the track to the farmhouse door before and he unwittingly dropped up to his chest into the slurry pit which, through years of practice, Phil and Mrs. Parsons and Zinnia and the rest of the herd would have known to avoid. The farm always smelled, but by disturbing the slurry, as Scott did with the speed of his fall, he spread an extra layer of stench not only over himself but also the whole yard.

They pulled him out between them without a word being exchanged. Phil got a bucket, filled it from the tap in the yard and threw it over him, then another and another.

“No, no, come into the house. You can stand in the bath and strip off in there. I’ll lend you something of Phil’s.”

Three buckets of water had made little impression on the stinking mess that was Scott. His spanking-clean chinos were now thick with cow dung; his checked shirt, bought in Sydney the day he left, was weighed down with the thick sludge; his boots were filled with it; his bare arms and hands oozed the stuff. He took a moment to be grateful that he hadn’t had time to change into his Timberland boots before she’d called him. Bitter desperation filled him. Strip off in front of Mrs. Parsons? Not likely! An outfit belonging to Phil? Even less likely!

“Thanks all the same. Do you have some newspaper for the car, Phil? I’ll get back to the practice and shower there. I keep a spare set of clothing there just in case.” He didn’t, but in circumstances like these a lie was neither here nor there.

He lumbered across to the Land Rover with filth squelching in his boots at every step. Before he got in, he smoothed his hands all over himself and squeezed away as much of the loose stuff as he could. The newspapers he spread all over the seat and the back of it, and gingerly climbed in. Scott opened every window, reversed and was about to stamp on the accelerator when Mrs. Parsons appeared beside him.

“Your cake! Don’t go without it.” She held the bag up to the window, and Scott reached out a stinking, filth-streaked hand and thanked her politely for it. The ludicrousness of the situation struck him and he began to laugh and was still laughing, but by then somewhat hysterically, when he arrived back at the practice.

Finding the back door locked and no amount of hammering bringing a response, he clumped around to the main door and went in.

When the smell that was Scott reached Joy, she looked up from the desk and saw him standing dripping on the doormat with pieces of the newspaper from the seat still stuck to his back. The astonishment on her face struck Scott as highly comical. But there was nothing funny about her reaction. “Get out, you absolute nincompoop! Out! Go on! Out!”

The clients patiently waiting their turns protested loudly at the smell. Covering their noses with handkerchiefs, they shouted, “Get out, Scott! What a smell.”

Slowly the sodden cow dung on his socks began sinking into the doormat. Scott looked down at the mess he was creating and muttered plaintively, “I can’t help it. No one answered the bloody door when I knocked.”

“Oh. Language!” someone said.

Joy endeavored to retrieve the situation by telling him to go around the back and she’d send someone out to help. Which Scott did. A client got up and opened the windows to let out the smell while Joy went to ask Kate to give a hand outside.

She stood him on a grate by the back door and hosed him down till he was shuddering with cold. “I’ve got to take my clothes off.”

“I’ll go in and start the shower; leave your clothes out here and I’ll sort them out, and please dry yourself off a bit with this dog towel before you come in.”

“Dog towel! Oh, thanks! Good on you, mate!”

“Otherwise, we’ll have filthy water everywhere. Go on, do as I say.”

Showered and warmed and dressed in Mungo’s gardening trousers and shirt, Scott sat in the accounts office drinking the scorching-hot coffee Kate had made for him, muttering threats about Applegate Farm. “I shall report him. I said I wouldn’t, but I shall.”

“For what?”

“For selling milk on the quiet when Milkmarque won’t collect from his farm. For keeping animals in disgraceful conditions, though I have to admit they do seem happy and are not actually in any danger. He knows every one of them by name.”

“How did you come to be like this?”

Scott’s eyes gleamed with amusement over the rim of his mug. “I fell into the slurry pit.”

“You didn’t! How could anyone do that? Weren’t you looking where you were going?”

“Parsons’s pit isn’t fenced.”

“But what about the cows, don’t they fall in it?”

“Oh no! They know where it is and walk around it. Trouble is the yard is so thick with mud and mess you don’t see where the mud finishes and the pit starts. Thank God they were there to pull me out.”

Kate knew she shouldn’t laugh because Scott was so dejected, but she couldn’t help it and it began to bubble up inside her. He caught her eye and they both laughed.

Kate pulled herself together and said, “Look, there’s the rest of the calls still to do. You’ve got to go.”

He stood up. “You’re getting as bad as Joy, you are, and you’ve only been here a week. To cheer a miserable Aussie up, will you come out with him tonight?” Seeing the doubt in her face he added, “For a drink?”

Gravely Kate studied him and answered, “All right. I will. Just for a drink.”

“But of course, sweet one, as you say, just for a drink. Fox and Grapes about eight?”

M
IA,
Gerry and Kate were finishing their evening meal when the front door opened and they heard Adam’s “It’s only me.”

There he was in the kitchen in his tenpins bowling outfit.

Gerry covered Kate’s and Mia’s surprised silence by saying, “Come in, Adam. There’s still some tea in the pot. Like some?”

Mia got up to get the extra cup and Kate looked up at him. “Yes?”

Adam didn’t quite look her in the eye but answered, “Thought I’d just pop around.”

“I didn’t think you would be coming for me tonight, after Sunday.”

“Here, son.” Gerry pulled out the chair next to Kate. “Sit here.”

Mia passed him his cup of tea and pushed the sugar bowl across to him.

Gerry made pleasant remarks about the weather, trying to lighten the atmosphere, and wondered why things didn’t seem right.

Adam ignored him and said to Kate, “I waited outside on Sunday but you didn’t come out.”

“I know I didn’t.”

Gerry and Mia tried to disguise their surprise. Gerry asked feebly, “Why didn’t you?” but got no reply.

“Well?”

“I told you not to come. I said I wouldn’t go out to lunch.”

“But we always do.”

Seeing that Adam was disinclined to look at her, Kate twisted around in her chair and glared at him. “You are a chump, Adam. Who in their right mind would sit outside a house for a whole hour and then drive away?”

“But I never knock on Sundays.”

“Exactly. But just once perhaps you could break the habit of a lifetime and knock. Where are you expecting to go tonight?”

Adam looked down at his beige sweatshirt and trousers, which in the catalogue had been described—stylishly, he thought—as taupe, and his immaculate white socks and bowling shoes. He plucked at his sweatshirt and said, “Isn’t it obvious?”

“Perfectly. Unfortunately, I’ve made other arrangements for tonight.”

He couldn’t have looked more surprised if she’d said she was going skinny-dipping. “Other arrangements? What do you mean? It’s Tuesday.”

Mia gently interrupted this painful dialogue. “Adam, just for once Kate wants a change. Don’t you sometimes want to do things differently?”

“Well, no, I don’t. I’ll miss it if we don’t go.”

“I shan’t. You’re not very good at it and I’m tired of making a fool of myself for your sake. I try not to win and I do, every time.”

Mia couldn’t believe how hurtful Kate was being to Adam and neither could Gerry, who felt a conciliatory word was required. “I think you should cancel this outing you’ve planned and go with Adam, Kate. It’s only fair.”

Kate got up from her chair. “I don’t want to hurt your feelings . . .”

Adam looked angry now and his anger disturbed Kate more than she liked to admit. Usually he flushed when he was upset but this time he was white to the gills. Through gritted teeth he said, “It’s too late; you already have.”

“To be honest, I’ve arranged to have a drink with . . . someone from work.”

Adam got to his feet. “Well, there’s no point going on my own.” Pushing his chair under the table, he asked her outright, “Is it that Aussie?”

“Well, yes, it is. He’s had a really bad day today and he needed cheering up, and I thought after Sunday you wouldn’t be coming.”

“I knew you should never have gone to work there. I just knew it. How can you contemplate having an evening out with someone else when you’re
my girl
? You always spend Tuesday night with me. Ring him up and cancel it like your father said.” Kate didn’t make a move, so Adam pounded his right fist into his left palm and added with an unwholesome attempt at authority in his voice to which all three took exception, “Do as I say!”

Mia, with unaccustomed forcefulness in her tone, said, “Don’t speak to my Kate like that; I won’t tolerate it. She’s a free agent; she can go out with whom she pleases and wherever she is going is all right by me because I know I can rely on her. You don’t own her, Adam, and you’ll do well to remember that.”

Gerry was about to add his own comment to Mia’s statement and opened his mouth to do so, but Adam glared at each one in turn and left the kitchen without another word.

When the front door slammed, Gerry sat back appalled. “What the blazes is up with him?”

Mia, very troubled by Adam’s reaction, said, “He’s turning into a bully, that’s what. Speaking like that to Kate! Don’t let it spoil your evening; that Scott is a nice boy.”

“Perhaps I should go after him . . .”

Gerry, who’d championed Adam through thick and thin for the last two years, said, “No, best let the dust settle. The prospect of that promotion has gone to his head, speaking like that to you in my house. I won’t have it.” He took out his wallet and, picking out a ten-pound note, handed it to Kate. “I know you’re short till you get your first month’s salary, so here, take this. I want you to be able to stand your corner. Doesn’t do to be beholden to anyone, not even that Scott, nice though he is.”

“There’s no need, Dad, but thanks.”

W
HEN
Kate went into the Fox and Grapes, she found Scott already there. He was sitting at a corner table with an enormous plate of food in front of him. She saw him pick up his knife and fork and begin to eat, and judging by the enthusiasm with which he dived into his food, she guessed he hadn’t eaten all day, so she decided to spend a couple of minutes in the ladies’ room to give him a little time to take the edge off his hunger.

Her reflection in the mirror in there quite pleased her. She’d taken the trouble to put on makeup, which she didn’t do every day, and she admired her new eye shadow, then looked a little closer at her forehead, thinking she could see lines appearing already and no wonder. What on earth had gotten into Adam? He had never been an emotional person, but now, since his promise of promotion, he’d gone distinctly highly charged in the most unpleasant way. Perhaps she was to blame, for she hadn’t been quite fair, but there wasn’t any need to go quite as ballistic as he had done tonight. Even Mia had taken exception, and her dad. Anyway, she and Adam weren’t engaged or anything, so if she decided not to see him again, she wouldn’t. An evening with Scott was a very interesting alternative to trying to lose at bowling. She winked at herself in the mirror and charged out to find Scott.