Animal Instincts Page 6

  “No. I mean, yes. I’m not rushing back.”

  “Fine. See you sometime, then.” And then, over her shoulder, “Good luck with the spiky things. The ones you’re cutting, I mean.”

  Kit watched her go, and Jinty felt slightly ashamed of her own bare-faced cheek, which did not stop her smiling to herself as Seltzer picked his way down the cliff-path.

  Jess Wetherby, who had watched the encounter from the other side of the valley, let fly with her pickaxe in an attempt to rid the hole she was digging of a hefty stone and her mind of pent-up frustration.

  “So what’s he like?” Sally, the Billings-Gores’ groom, was responding to Jinty’s news that she had encountered Kit Lavery on her hack along the coastal path.

  “He’s a bit of a dish, actually.”

  Sally, hard at work with the hoof-pick on Allardyce’s left foreleg, took Jinty to task. “I bet you only took that route to see if you could bump into him.”

  “What a dreadful thing to say.” Jinty suppressed a giggle. “As if I’d risk incurring the wrath of the two battleaxes just to see if I could spot a bit of talent!”

  “Oh, heaven forbid!” Sally’s voice was heavy with sarcasm. “So, come on then. Describe him.”

  Jinty, vigorously brushing Seltzer’s flanks, kept her eyes firmly on the horse and the job in hand. “He’s about six foot, fair curly hair, good-looking.”

  “Hunky?”

  “You bet.” She paused to scrape Seltzer’s hair from the dandy-brush with a curry-comb. “Quiet, though.” She looked reflective. “Not wet. Gentle . . . you know.”

  “Strong silent type?”

  “God, I hope not. I’ve had enough of them.”

  “Oh, so we are prospecting, then?”

  “No, we are not. I was just being neighbourly.”

  Sally muttered something under her breath.

  “What?”

  “Nothing. Bet you’re going to see him again, though.”

  “Nothing to do with me. Up to him.” She carried on grooming, while Seltzer tore a mouthful of hay from the net on the stable wall.

  “You sowed the seed, then, did you?” Sally finished Allardyce’s hoof and stood upright, her plump cheeks rosy from exertion.

  “Might have done.”

  “Oh, come on! What happened?”.

  “Nothing.” Jinty did her best to play down the encounter. “I just said that if he wanted to come and look at the stables he was welcome. That’s all.”

  “Fast work!” said Sally. “Very impressive.”

  Jinty lobbed the brush at her, but she sidestepped and it landed with a splosh in Allardyce’s water bucket.

  “Cheek!” Jinty grinned, then recalled the figure standing on the cliff-top. “Fun, though.” She took Seltzer’s halter and led him out across the yard, calling over her shoulder, “Great fun . . . I hope.”

  Sally shook her head and sighed. Only yesterday Jinty O’Hare had sworn that she had lost all interest in men. She had known it wouldn’t last.

  Kit felt nervous at the prospect but it had to be addressed. He had told Elizabeth that he wanted to go into Totnes to hire a car so that he would be independently mobile. It was only partly true: he also wanted to call in at the estate agent’s.

  A letter from a firm who sounded as though they ought to know what they were doing had landed on the doormat barely two days before. Clearly they had seen the chance of rich pickings, but if they were keen maybe they could sell the place quickly.

  The well-spoken young man in country tweeds and a burgundy-striped shirt greeted him just a little too familiarly, and motioned him to take a seat in front of the large wooden desk.

  Kit explained the situation.

  “Yes, of course.” The fresh-faced agent was more oleaginous than a bottle of extra-virgin olive oil. “I think, though, to be perfectly honest, it will be almost impossible to sell the nature reserve as a reserve. I would have to recommend that it is sold as a country estate with just a mention that part of the land is at present run as a conservation enterprise. That, really, is as much as we can hope to do.”

  Kit bridled at the prospect of his father’s work being undervalued.

  “West Yarmouth does have a good reputation as a reserve, locally, though it is still a very difficult market. But as a small agricultural estate, and occupying the position it does – with excellent coastal views – I think you’ll have no trouble in selling.”

  “I’m sorry, but I really do want to sell the reserve as a going concern. It’s what my father wanted.”

  “Well, if you’re sure.” Then, seeing the look of determination on Kit’s face, “We’ll certainly have a try, Mr Lavery.”

  “How much do you think it might fetch?” Kit felt guilty at putting a price on his father’s life’s work.

  “Something in excess of a million pounds. Perhaps a million and a half. More if we can find a determined buyer.”

  “Wow!” Kit slumped back in the chair, reeling. He tried to make sense of the figure, then remembered Arthur Maidment’s offer for the land. “What if the land were to be sold separately from the house?”

  “I wouldn’t advise that. I think it would be best to attempt to sell the estate as a whole, which should be more profitable, and perhaps split it up only if no offers are forthcoming. We don’t get many estates like this coming on to the market, and when they do they often command a high price. You’re in a very strong position, Mr Lavery – even given the conservation side of the property. And, of course, the inheritance tax will be reduced because it’s an agricultural estate. As you probably know, agricultural land is not subject to the same level of tax as other property.”

  “Yes, I realise that.” Kit had now grasped the nature of his father’s legacy. If he sold the land leased to Maidment separately he would be unlikely to get a high price for it – certainly not enough to allow him to continue running the rest of the estate himself and pay off the inheritance tax.

  He could sell the entire estate, but only if he could find a buyer who would maintain it as a nature reserve – and he would make sure of that. In spite of the estate agent’s misgivings, surely he could check out prospective purchasers to make sure that they intended to carry on his father’s work. His choices were clear. His head was anything but.

  Pigs do not necessarily go to sleep when it gets dark, which is a good thing. Wilson had to do a good deal of listening that night before she turned in. But she enjoyed the apples.

  Chapter 9: Bittersweet

  (Solanum dulcamara)

  Titus Ormonroyd was not what you’d call refined. He called a spade a bloody shovel, rather than a non-mechanical earth-moving facilitator, and thought a gentleman was someone who got out of the bath to have a pee. For twenty years or more he’d been huntsman to the Lynchampton, serving the Master, Sir Roland Billings-Gore, and his late predecessor, Lord Tallacombe. When Kit was a boy he’d spent much of his school holidays with Titus at Quither Cottage, set halfway between West Yarmouth Farmhouse and Baddesley Court. Titus’s cottage went with the job. It was here that the Lynchampton hounds were kennelled, and here that the young Kit had helped with feeding and whelping, begging his father, on the arrival of every litter, to let him have a pup. The answer was always the same: ‘Sorry, but no.’ His contact with horses had begun here, too, kindling an interest that blossomed in later life and turned casual appreciation into skilful breeding.

  Surprisingly, Kit’s father had always got on with Titus. They were, maintained Rupert, two men approaching the same problem from different angles. He frequently disagreed with Titus – certainly in his opinions about hunting – but he recognised in the straight-talking Yorkshireman another countryman with a sympathetic approach to the countryside. Even if he did kill things.

  Kit would have called on Titus sooner, had he not been laid low by the cold and diverted by solicitors and estate agents. As it was, it took him the best part of a week before he got round to paying a visit.

  If Titus hadn’t chang
ed, he would be just the sort of company Kit needed. He was male, for a start, and male company had been in scant supply lately, he had a sense of humour that the generous would call robust, and the puritanical filthy, and he was a good listener, with a powerful sense of reasoning based on common sense.

  The sound of hounds giving tongue led Kit round to the back of Quither Cottage. It was just as he had remembered it. Rows of low, brick-built kennels, fronted by concrete pens surrounded by metal railings. Hounds of all patterns, their sterns wagging furiously, were calling for their food. In the middle of the canine mayhem, Kit recognised the familiar figure. He was grey-haired now, and his hairline had receded a little, but the short, bandy-legged man in wellies and dark blue overalls, with a bucket in each hand, was still the Titus of old. “Gedout y’old bugger! Wait a minute. Gerraway!”

  Kit stood and watched from the corner of one of the outbuildings as Titus went about his work. Kit smiled. It was good to hear the northern tones again. It made him feel more at home than he had so far, even though he had been living in his old house. The unfamiliar company of Punch and Wetherby had left him feeling alien.

  He waited for the commotion to die down. Titus came out of one of the kennel yards with his empty buckets, slipped the bolt on the gate and began walking down the path towards Kit, a preoccupied expression on his face. Then he saw Kit standing ten yards away and his face lit up. “Well, I’ll be buggered. Look who it isn’t!” He put down his buckets, marched up to Kit and ruffled his hair. “You’re still a big bugger aren’t you?” He squeezed Kit’s arms with his hands, then stood back and put his hands on his hips.

  “Well, I’d heard you were coming back.” His expression changed, to one of sorrow. “Reet sorry about your dad. Dreadful thing.” He looked at the ground, and Kit reacquainted himself with his old friend’s appearance. His cheeks were ruddy, the Roman nose was as hooked as ever, and the glass right eye sparkled like the dew. Titus had lost the original to a cantankerous cow at the age of thirteen. A cow with a horn, as he was wont to explain with a wink.

  The appropriate consoling remarks having been made, Titus allowed his joy at the return of the Prodigal Son to resurface. “Ee, it’s grand to see yer! Here for long?”

  “Looks like it. Something of a can of worms.”

  “Oh, I can imagine.” He raised his eyebrows. “You’ve met the ladies, then?”

  “I have.”

  “They’ll be leadin’ you a right dance, I’ll bet.”

  Kit smiled ruefully. “A bit.”

  “ ’Ere, come on. Cup of tea. I was just goin’ to put kettle on. Fancy one? A cup of tea, I mean. I can’t offer anything else.”

  Kit laughed. “You’ve not changed. I’d love one.”

  “Won’t be long, Becky,” Titus shouted, to the fair-haired kennelmaid, who was mucking out lower down the run. She raised a hand in acknowledgement.

  They walked towards the cottage, Titus dropping off the buckets in an outhouse whose smell rekindled old memories in Kit – the sweet aroma of hay and feed, corn and meal. The smell of the countryman, the keeper, the man of the woods.

  As Titus opened the kitchen door, a pair of dark brown eyes glinted in the gloom. “ ’Alio, then, gel,” he greeted the liver and white spaniel bitch, as she wiggled her way across the floor to him.

  “Who’s this, then?” asked Kit.

  “This is Nell, and she’s a lovely gel, in’t she?” he asked as the dog rolled over on to her back. “Look at that. Soft as putty.” He stroked the soft hair on her belly.

  “You’ve not lost your touch, then,” teased Kit.

  “Not bloody likely! And she’s goin’ to be a little belter, is this one, once she’s properly trained.”

  “Gun dog?”

  “No, I don’t think so. Just company. Lost me appetite for shootin’. ’Appen yer dad’s influence finally paid off.”

  “What happened to Fly?”

  “Ah, poor old bugger. Went blind in the end. Died six month ago. Good age though. Sixteen.” Titus carried on tickling. “Now it’s just the two on us, in’t it?”

  “Thought you were a border collie man?”

  “Well, I were. But then this little lady landed on me doorstep. Don’t know where she came from, but thought I’d better take care of her.”

  The huntsman, fresh from his no-nonsense marshalling of the hounds outside, was clearly besotted with the spaniel at his feet. Kit looked around him. The kitchen had hardly changed at all. The ancient black range still stood against one wall, with a threadbare armchair to one side, at its foot the dog’s basket. An old pine table with green-painted legs occupied the centre of the room, and a couple of spoke-back chairs were pulled up to it.

  Titus had lived on his own for the last fifteen years. His wife, a good sort, popular in the village and a stalwart of the WI, had died of cancer when Kit was away at school. Some had thought Titus would never recover – he and Edie had been a devoted pair – and he had taken it hard, but he had pulled through, and never missed a meet. He diverted his sorrows, he said, into being better at his job.

  He filled the kettle at the brass tap above the old porcelain sink and put it on the range, then turned to the cupboard to sort out mugs, milk and sugar. He looked over his shoulder as he did so, and threw his favourite question at Kit. “Are you courtin’, then?”

  “It’s taken you seven and a half minutes to ask that. You’re losing your touch.”

  Titus shook his head, and the twinkly brown eyes became a little glazed. “Must be me age.”

  “I’ve got a girl in Australia. Heather. Her dad runs the stud where I work.”

  “Blonde, brunette or redhead?” asked Titus, as though studying racing form.

  “Brunette.”

  “Mmm. You could have children with hair of any colour, then.”

  “We haven’t got that far yet.”

  “Shame. You can’t afford to hang about, you know.” The twinkle returned to both eyes. “Has she got nice legs?”

  Kit laughed. “Never you mind.”

  “Just wondered.”

  Titus’s eye for a girl was well known, and he had always liked ‘a good pair of legs’, but his devotion to Edie had been absolute, and in spite of the frequent anatomical enquiry he had never strayed. He had asked the question even when she was alive, to her annoyance and mock-embarrassment. She blamed it all on the fact that Titus’s early days had been spent with the local butcher.

  There were those in the village who regarded Titus Ormonroyd as coarse and crude, but he was a man of contradictions: always well-mannered with the ladies, and the life and soul of a party of men. He always had a fresh joke up his sleeve – the dirtier the better – and when a few pints had been downed in the Cockle and Curlew, he would whisper it in conspiratorial tones to the assembled company, his glass eye somersaulting at the juicy bits.

  Titus made the tea, then sat with Kit at the table as Nell curled herself around her master’s feet. “So how serious is it, this girl in Australia?”

  Kit sipped his tea. “Too soon to say.”

  “That doesn’t sound very good.”

  “Well, yes, it’s serious, but I don’t know whether I’m ready for that sort of commitment.”

  “Mmm.” Titus looked at him curiously. “But you love her?”

  Kit raised his eyes. “Of course I love her.”

  “Coming over here won’t have helped much, then?”

  Kit gazed into his mug of coffee. “You can say that again.”

  “My guess is you really want to sell up ’ere and go back there. Right?”

  “Yes. I keep having visions of how it looks in Balnunga Valley. I can smell the bush. Feel the heat. It’s only a few days since I was there – perfectly happy, cruising along with a nice girl for company, doing the sort of job I’m good at, reasonably well off, no worries. I just want to sell up everything here and bugger off back. This place is nothing to do with me.”

  “But you feel guilty about lettin’ your d
ad down?”

  “Yes.”

  “Can’t really ’elp there, can I?”

  “Nope.”

  “Give yerself time. You’ll work it out in the end. No point in rushin’ things. You might just as well settle yourself ’ere for a while until it’s clear in yer head. Does yon lass in Australia mind?”

  “Well, she’s not exactly delirious.”

  “Good test.”

  “What do you mean?”

  “If she’s keen she’ll wait.”

  “And what about me?”

  “Maybe it’ll help you decide about that commitment thing. How keen do you think you are?”

  “What is this? The Spanish Inquisition?”

  “Just tryin’ to ’elp.”

  “I know.” Kit rubbed his hands over his face, as though wiping away his worries. “What I really need is to forget about the whole thing for a few days. I’ve been thinking of nothing else.”

  “What you need is a bit of female company,” said Titus, with a twinkle that was especially noticeable in his glass eye.

  Kit laughed. “I think I’ve had enough of that!”

  “No, not the two Land Girls. A bit of, you know . . . something to take your mind off things.”

  Kit looked reflective. “Actually, it’s funny you should say that.”

  Titus looked at him sideways. “Why?”

  “Met someone yesterday.”

  “Who?”

  “Jinty O’Hare.”

  “Ha!” Titus beamed from ear to ear.

  “What’s she like?”

  “Young Jinty? A cracker. Bit of a handful, though. Nice legs. If I were your age . . . well . . .” Titus shook his head. “Where did you meet ’er?”

  “She was riding along the coastal path. Big grey.”

  “Seltzer,” Titus said. “She was takin’ a risk.”

  “What do you mean?”

  “Well, your dad didn’t really approve of her riding along there – not that he could stop her, it’s a public right of way, and the two Land Girls never really liked her.”