Place in the Country

Rob Stuart

Description

When yuppies Mitchell and Jocasta Dever move into Yew Tree cottage in the Hampshire village of Itchen Prior they fondly imagine they'll be starting a new life of bucolic bliss in a rural idyll. In fact, things don't exactly turn out like that. What they iAAnd is a seething pit of incest, sexual jealousy, paganism, exploitation, sharp business practices, feudalism and murder. A Place in the Country - whose galaxy of characters includes Sherborne St John, the lord of the manor and his scheming wife, Gwendolyn, who keeps her stable hand, Crux Easton, as a sex slave; Jed Smith, exploitative garden centre owner who uses the Bosnian student Jagoda Doboj and her friends as cheap illegal labour, and the deeply dubious Warren family - is a novel that takes a hilarious, jaunty, and also often moving and disturbing look at a rural idyll that is anything but.

Informations

• Publié par: The Conrad Press
• Date de parution: 15 mai 2018
• Nombre de lectures: 0
• EAN13: 9781912643660
• Langue: English

Extrait

A Place in the Country
Rob Stuart


A Place in the Country
Published by The Conrad Press in the United Kingdom 2018
Tel: [phone] www.theconradpress.com [e-mail]
ISBN 978-1-912643-66-0
Copyright © Rob Stuart, 2018
The moral right of Rob Stuart to be identified as author of this work has been asserted in accordance with the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988.
All rights reserved.
Typesetting and Cover Design by:Charlotte Mouncey, www.bookstyle.co.uk
The Conrad Press logo was designed by Maria Priestley.


To Liane


1
O n a Saturday morning in late May, Mitchell Dever sits with his wife, Jocasta, in his new metallic blue BMW, which he’s parked in front of Yew Tree Cottage, the thatched residence they’ve bought in the Hampshire village of Itchen Prior.
Mitchell closes his eyes and listens to the ticking of the car’s engine in the soft spring air as his pride and joy cools down (his car, not Jocasta, although he regards his wife as the love of his life) following the long drive from London down the M3.
‘Oh dear, the place looks quite dilapidated,’ says Jocasta, doubtfully. ‘Much more of a wreck than it was in March.’
‘Nonsense, my love,’ Mitchell replies, optimistically. Like the new car, which was a thirty-seventh birthday present to himself, this move to the country is very much his pet project; an escape from the daily commute on overcrowded public transport.
‘Let’s remember what the estate agent said, darling,’ Mitchell adds. ‘ A dream cottage for a new rural lifestyle. ’
‘But the garden’s a jungle!’ exclaims Jocasta.
‘ A bucolic haven , he told us,’ Mitchell adds.
‘I thought bucolic was something babies got.’
‘Darling, he meant it’s a pastoral idyll, and he was right. It’ll be marvellous. We’ll have chickens, a goat, maybe even a sheep. It’s going to be such an adventure.’
‘But we don’t know a thing about rearing animals.’
‘Exactly! It’ll all be a totally new experience. Our new life. No more London, no more risking your life on your bike in the rush hour, or being crammed onto the tube with our noses pressed into armpits.’
Mitchell looks pleadingly at the woman he loves. He hardly ever ceases admiring her beautiful green eyes, her blond hair tied back into a pony tail, her picturesque face with its strong, very feminine features. He feels a rush of the warmest emotions. He knows perfectly well that Jocasta thinks he’s engaged on a mid-life crisis, what with the new car and this new rural life he craves. But he also knows she loves him and is prepared to indulge his whims, and he in turn loves her for being prepared to indulge them.
‘And don’t forget the dodgy plumbing,’ she adds.
‘Darling, we discussed that,’ Mitchell replies gently. ‘Pavel and Karol have promised to come down asap to start work.’
Jocasta purses her lips, her usual expression when she isn’t convinced.
‘Darling,’ says Mitchell, ‘once we get Harriet’s interior designers in you’ll have free rein to stamp your mark on the place. We can afford it, after all. It’s all going to be lovely. We can even have a conservatory with workstations for each of us. Working from home, with wonderful views. Why didn’t we think of it before?’
Harriet is Jocasta’s younger sister.
Jocasta gives a shrug. ‘Well, I suppose it might work.’
‘No, love, it definitely will.’
Mitchell smiles. He feels happy; very much in love with the cottage and with Jocasta. They sold their Victorian terrace in Chiswick for almost a million and bought this cottage for just over half that, so they still have more than enough for the renovations.
Mitchell is sure a door has opened; life in the countryside beckons in the company of the salt of the earth, a close-knit village community, with (he imagines) village fetes, flower shows, a village pub, a cricket team etc.
The countryside! He wants it to be like the Archers, but all the time, not only in fifteen-minute segments.
Mitchell opens the driver door and gets out of the car. He takes deep breaths, expanding his chest to accommodate the wonderful smog-free air.
‘What’s that awful smell?’ Jocasta exclaims.
Mitchell coughs and shuffles his feet.
‘I’m not quite sure, love,’ he says. ‘Silage, manure, and that kind of stuff I suppose. It’s the smell of the countryside. Ah, my little city girl, you’ve a lot to learn about the ways of the country.’
‘And you’re some kind of expert, are you? You’ve never lived out of West London in your whole life until now. You’re about as rustic as Earls Court Station!’
Mitchell doesn’t deny this, but with a sudden impulsive sweep of his arms, lifts Jocasta off her feet and staggers with her in his arms in the direction of the front door. This bold romantic gesture ends when he has to put her down to get the door key out of his pocket. The lock is stiff and Mitchell struggles with it.
The door opens reluctantly. They are hit by a smell of mildew and must. The estate agent has assured them this will vanish, following a good airing.


2
A bout a hundred yards down the lane from Yew Tree Cottage, Ashley Warren, forty-three, plump, her brown hair in a bun, is kneading dough in her kitchen. Her strong hands are covered with flour and flecks of dough.
Her partner Seth, forty-five, closes the front door behind him with a firm slam. He is a small, dark man with bright eyes and sharp movements that always reminds Ashley of one of the five ferrets he keeps in the shed outside.
Ashley wonders what Seth has got himself overexcited about this time. She can see that his eyes are wild and that he’s shaking with excitement and bursting with news.
‘Incomers!’ exclaims Seth, as if announcing the outbreak of World War Three. ‘ Incomers! From outside the village!’
Ashley looks at him calmly and says nothing.
‘Didn’t you hear what I said?’ Seth demands. ‘Incomers! To Itchen Prior! Remember when Major Wallop came? When were that? Six year ago? Not been such excitement since. Not even when Cole Henley got crushed by that traction engine at the village fete.’
‘Well, he shouldn’t have been abusing himself against the back wheel,’ says Ashley, still stoically pummelling at the loaf. ‘He wouldn’t be told. It was his own stupid fault.’
‘Never mind him, Ash. Incomers! I’ve seen them!’
Ashley pauses in her punching of the dough, delivers a series of elbow strikes, flings it in the air and smashes it down onto the table. Almost gently, now that the battle is won, she brushes the top with milk from a jug and commits the body to the Aga.
‘Where were they?’ she asks.
‘At Yew Tree Cottage.’
‘You mean the ones who paid Penton Mewsley half a million quid? They must be mad. The place is falling down.’
‘He’s done well though, the canny bugger. He’s talking about jetting off to that Thailand and buying himself a Thai bride or two.’ He pronounces it ‘Thighland’ and ‘Thigh’.
‘If you ask me,’ Ashley opines, ‘he’s likely to end up with half a dozen of them girlyboys.’
‘Oh, I see,’ says Seth vaguely. He is puzzled as to the exact nature of girlyboys. Ashley prides herself on being the worldly one of the family and has read books and watches all those fact programmes on the TV during the daytime. Seth is more of a sports and soaps man. He is convinced that Eastenders is an accurate portrayal of urban life. He has never been a great traveller, hardly ever going beyond the local market town of Westleigh, and never having been to London at all.
‘What, like that Eurovision singer whatsisname?’ asks Seth.
‘Yes, I expect so.’
Ashley’s own idea of normal human relations has always been that if you keep it in the family, you can’t go wrong. This has been a Warren tradition for centuries. She is also Seth’s younger sister, the stock of cousins having dwindled away. Other people, Ashley thought, had such complicated lives. You only had to look at that stuck-up cow Gwendolyn St John who was no better than she ought to be seeing as her father had been the shepherd on the estate. Goodness knows, the things he got up to with the sheep, whenever he got ill he was as likely to call in the vet as the doctor.
‘Half a million quid,’ Seth muses. ‘What we could do with that!’
‘Such as?’ Ashley says, glancing at him.
‘Oh, lots of things.’ Seth says vaguely, going over to the cider jug and taking a good slug. But his imagination stops at the bounds of Itchen Prior, which Ashley knows he will never leave.
Ashley draws up the old carver chair to the table and plonks herself down.
‘Pass the jug, you daft old sod. Like o’ us, we ain’t never going be rich.’
She sighs and pours herself a generous measure of cider into a cracked mug.


3
C ompared with most of the stately homes of Old England, St John Hall could be described by the National Trust as modest, but the present owners - Gwendolyn St John, thirty-four and her fifty-three-year-old husband Sherborne St John (it’s always been ‘St John’ not ‘Sinjun’; they’re a literal kind of family) - regard it as a place they could never imagine not living in. Not unless Sherborne were to die and Gwendolyn were to sell it, anyway.
St John Hall is a Jacobean red-brick residence, built onto an earlier building dating from 1540, when the St John of the time saw a chance to capitalise on the Dissolution of religious houses and bought it cheap. The main feature of architectural interest are the two high chimney stacks twisting their way skyward from the west end of the building, and the motto of the St Johns ( nihil debit: meaning that an accused defendant says nothing) carved on the lintel of the Great Door (said to be by the legendary Grinling Gibbons). The St Johns have made a point of presenting a modest persona to the world ever since a narrow squeak in 1571 when they became involved in a dodgy wool deal wit