The Country Escape (7 page)

‘Mr Ever After?’ One of the Romanian runners came in with the sandwiches and water he’d asked for.

‘Everett.’ He glanced up from the script as her cleavage came level with his nose. She had a tiny tattoo of a heart on one breast.

Catching him looking at it, she dropped a big smile and two dark blue eyes into
his line of vision. ‘You like? Is where my heart, he lives.’ Her accent was rich and deliciously vampirish.

‘Actually it should be on the left.’

‘Uh?

‘Your heart’s on the wrong axis.’

Her lips parted and a pink tongue brushed along her very white teeth. Her pupils were huge, he noticed. ‘You want axes to chop wood?’

Dougie grinned. Access-all-areas come-ons were
increasingly common, but ‘axes’ was a new one. He couldn’t wait to tell Abe, his agent. He’d love that. Abe was always telling him not to mistake his on-screen persona for off-screen invincibility. When Dougie had first made the transition from stuntman to film actor, his roles had inevitably been high on violent action and low on lines, with no love interest whatsoever. His biggest fans then
were teenage boys obsessed with medieval warfare. Then he’d been cast alongside a pretty Hispanic actress in
Dark Knight
. There was minimal romantic action – she’d died in his arms in the first ten minutes, after which he cut a lot of people to shreds – but the fan-mail had poured in, and the press had got excited about the ‘Everett Effect’. Off camera, Dougie was a good-looking man with a certain
British charm. On camera, however, something magical happened when he was in close-up with a female co-star, the long-lashed blue eyes mesmerizing, the handsome face simmering with unspoken sexual promise and fight-to-the-death-for-love loyalty. It was the Everett Effect.

Dougie Everett’s celluloid sex appeal was a revelation. As a result, he was working his way to the top of many casting
directors’ wish lists right now and Abe was cherry-picking the roles, the latest being a huge network series that he guaranteed would propel Dougie right up there with the very biggest names. Behind the scenes, Dougie was also being offered a lot of other cherries.

‘I give you anything you want, Mr Ever After,’ the girl said now, the message in her eyes unmistakable, slim thumbs hooking
through the belt loops of her skinny jeans, which lowered to reveal the smooth hollow above her pubic bone.

Dougie knew he should force himself to look away. Sex was easy currency in the movie business. Loyalty was harder won. He owed it to Kiki to break it off before he screwed around. But his blood was already pumping south, pulling logic from his mind as it fast-tracked instinct instead.
The engagement was as good as over and he deserved cheering up.

He flashed his charming smile. ‘Well I don’t want axes,’ he said, remembering an old
Two Ronnies
sketch his father loved. ‘Do you have fork handles?’

Her dark eyes looked questioning, then a slow smile spread across her face as she took in his expression.

‘I have four tattoos.’ Her nails were the same shade of
scarlet as the tiny heart. She unzipped her woollen hoodie. The little red heart was now riding high over a frilly bra. ‘You move my heart, Mr Ever After.’

‘Your heart is exquisite exactly where it is.’ Dougie stood up and walked towards her. ‘Please don’t waste it on me.’ The kick of tasting another mouth against his was just as intense as he remembered, with the sharp punch of guilty
pleasure. Kissing his way down her throat, he peeled her top sideways to reveal more froths of lingerie and another tattoo, a purple star this time. He closed his mouth around a dark nipple, her breasts deliciously small, soft and natural compared to Kiki’s peach-perfect, enhanced orbs. They even had an endearing scattering of freckles that reminded Dougie painfully of Iris. She looked no older than
eighteen. As she slipped down on to her knees, her mouth eager to take him, he felt his cock strain against the leather breeches.

She looked up questioningly. ‘Where is zip?’

‘Fuck.’ Going for a pee earlier had involved two costume assistants and an unpicking device. ‘How good are you at knots?’

Snow had started to fall once more by the time Dougie made it back on set, ten minutes late, his breeches knotted at a very odd angle. Fired up by the same wayward recklessness that had just taken him on a tour of the pretty runner’s
tattoos, his riding was breathtaking in its speed and daring.

The flakes fattened as the wild-eyed chestnut slalomed through the trees, kicking up ever-deeper snow before breaking out across open country to join mounted comrades, pursued by an imaginary giant boar. The crew were calling for a weather check, but the director knew this was too good to stop. After each take, Dougie patted
his chestnut horse and reached forward to rub its snow-topped mane and ears, grateful for its stamina, aware that his unfit Friesians could never have taken the pace or cold. It was a tedious stop-start process. The camera trolley kept getting stuck and the scene had to be reset and repeated. By the fifth take Dougie was even feeling sorry for the imaginary eight-tusked boar. He rested the heavy sword
on his shoulder and wriggled his fingers, which had gone totally numb in the thick gauntlets.

At that moment, a giant black shadow seemed to explode from the snowfall overhead.

‘What the —?’ The director’s voice was drowned by the roar of rotor blades and the screams of cast and crew.

Now firm friends and united by exhaustion, Dougie and his chestnut were the only ones not
to bat an eyelid when the helicopter loomed above the black firs in the middle of the scene, making an apocalyptic entrance. Lights flashing, it swooped down, sending snow over everything, terrifying the horses and wrecking continuity.

Trotting out of the snow cloud to safety, Dougie looked back at the carnage. While horses bolted and riders flew in every direction amid the white-out, the
flashy gold Eurocopter landed on the flattest piece of land, almost vanishing in a haze of snow.

The director swore furiously through the loudspeaker for order, calling a halt to that day’s shoot. The light was fading, they’d never have time to reset the scene and the fucking helicopter was in the way. It had better be the fucking Academy Awards telling him he was nominated after all.

The blades were still sending up a white-out. Head ducked against the bitter updraught, one of the grooms came to take the chestnut from Dougie, closely followed by the tattooed runner with a big squashy coat.

Having been in the saddle for almost two hours wielding a broadsword, Dougie was grateful for the early finish. His arm and shoulders ached as he clambered out of the saddle
and put on the old Puffa over his costume. The unremitting cold was starting to take its toll on his body. He needed a hot shower, a painkiller and a stiff drink before he checked his phone messages.

The helicopter’s rotors had reduced to half-speed. A door was opening.

‘Think the talent’s arrived early?’ suggested the larky character actor who was playing Dougie’s accident-prone
goblin sidekick.

Although Dougie was the arrow-shooting hero of most action scenes, the movie’s headline act was a far more established star, a former Bond actor who was being paid five times as much to deliver half a dozen lines and save the fairies. Dougie was looking forward to meeting him – he was a lifelong 007 fan and the man was a total hero.

‘Wouldn’t he go straight to the
ski lodge?’

‘Likes to make an entrance.’

They watched as a figure leaped out of the helicopter – athletic, tall, sophisticated and possibly licensed to kill, but definitely not a lightly grizzled Welshman with a supermodel wife and a carefully concealed drinking problem. Battling through the blizzard was a very beautiful Indian girl in a wolf-fur coat and hat.

She headed straight
for Dougie, her voice exquisitely deep. ‘Mr Everett?’

If there was one thing more exciting to Dougie than meeting a retired Bond hero, it was being cast in the role himself. And this was the closest he’d ever come. For an embarrassing moment he was completely tongue-tied.

‘Seth has sent me to collect you, Mr Everett,’ she told him, pocketing the tablet she was carrying and reaching
out to shake his hand.

‘Who’s Seth?’

‘You have not received a call today?’

He laughed. ‘The only calls we receive out here are set calls.’

‘No matter.’ She held up her arm to the pilot. A moment later, the engine pitch changed from idling to high rev. ‘We have a restaurant table booked. Come.’

He looked down at his gimp waistcoat and boots. ‘I’ll just scrub up
and change in my trailer. I must reek.’

Tutting, she walked back towards him, pressed her nose into his neck and breathed deeply. ‘You smell good. You have no time to change.’ Beckoning him, she disappeared into the white-out as the blades whined towards full speed.

For a moment, Dougie was glued to the spot, nonplussed. Then, zipping up his Puffa and hoping the restaurant had a
relaxed dress code, he followed her.

When Dougie had climbed into a plush leather seat in the helicopter beside the woman and strapped on the safety harness, she handed him a set of headphones, which he put on, then waited for her to explain what the hell was going on. But she said nothing, pulling out her iPad and typing into its screen instead.

‘What’s your name?’ he shouted,
over the little microphone by his mouth.

‘Deepak,’ came a walrus-voiced reply from the pilot as they took off. ‘You have been filming a movie, yes? What is the story?’

While Dougie shared the fantasy action plot, the woman showed no sign of listening in.

Dougie studied her thoughtfully. Whoever this ‘Seth’ was, he went for the glamorous-assistant cliché big-time. Chital-deer-eyed,
glossy-haired and pouting, she was exquisitely put together, albeit chillier than the glacial landscape outside. When he glanced at her iPad, expecting an encoded memo with Top Secret at the top, he saw she was solving a Sudoku puzzle.

Instead of flying along the river valley towards civilization, as he’d imagined, they were travelling higher into the mountains, a journey of less than twenty
minutes that took them to a frozen lake. As they came down to land, Dougie half imagined that its surface would break open to reveal an amazing high-tech headquarters. Instead, he saw a huge dome of snow carved beside it, against the mountainside, too symmetrical to have been shaped by nature. It resembled a giant sculpture of a beetle, the size of an aircraft hangar, with one long central backbone
from which arched limbs protruded.

‘Ice hotel,’ the pilot explained, as they came down to land. ‘The best in Europe.’

Inside, the building was a cathedral formed in snow, the light extraordinary, filtering through the walls from outside in a curious subterranean glow and enhanced with the coloured artificial beams that gleamed from the ice walls and ceilings. Dougie felt as if he
was walking inside the aurora borealis.

The glamorous fur-clad girl led him along the domed spine to a curtained archway marking the opening to a private suite of ice rooms, bathed in yet more exquisite light.

Dougie looked around for Bond baddies but there was just a luminous purple table spread with black slates topped with smoked-fish appetizers and two huge fur-lined ice chairs,
one of which the girl indicated he should sit in. He imagined that the mysterious Seth was probably watching from behind a double-sided ice-wall mirror. He had to be Indian, turbanned and mystical, with dark glasses and a tame eagle on a gauntlet.

‘Would you like a beer, Mr Everett?’ She walked to an ice wall carved with little indentations, each containing bottles of premium lagers. ‘What
would you like? Vintage 3? Something Belgian?’

‘Budvar’s fine, and please call me Dougie.’

She uncapped it and held it out. ‘Seth became a great admirer of your work when he saw
High Noon
. He believes you have serious talent. I also thought it was excellent and you are most talented.’ Her voice was perfectly modulated but strangely unemotional, like a satnav. ‘I recommended it to
him.’ Just for a moment the dark eyes flashed with something close to warmth, then shuttered back to professional cool.

‘Thank you. I’m sorry, I don’t know your name?’

‘My name is Dollar.’ Her face remained unsmiling. ‘Indeed, I also enjoyed
Dark Knight
, in which the stunts were very accomplished.’

‘Thank you.’ Dougie’s head swelled happily, as she settled on the reindeer
pelt in the adjacent chair. Her face was so still and beautiful. ‘When is Seth joining us?’

‘He’s not.’

Having been anticipating the arrival of a megalomaniac in full kurta pajama, Dougie was disappointed. The girl was ravishing, but not very enlightening company: she had yet to crack a facial expression. Right now her eyes gave him that strange, split-second warm glow, or was he
imagining it?

‘Seth is in Moscow this evening,’ she was saying in her deep monotone, ‘but we are in constant communication, and he has entrusted this meeting to me. First I must ask you to sign this.’ She produced her tablet, on which was loaded a page of close-typed legalese. Scrolling down to a blank box, she held out a touch pen. ‘It is a straightforward confidentiality agreement that
states nothing we discuss in this room this evening will be shared with a third party.’

‘Hang on, I have no idea what any of this is about.’

‘You’ll find out if you sign it, Mr Everett.’ She waggled the stylus impatiently.

Dougie scribbled on the screen.

‘Thank you.’ She took back the pen, unsmiling. ‘Please eat. I will get straight to the point. We would like to offer
you a job.’

Dougie had his mouth full of raw tuna exploding with pink peppercorns, vanilla and grapefruit. ‘Tell me more,’ he mumbled, longing for beer-battered cod and chips.

‘Seth would like you to be his professional huntsman. For one year initially.’

Peppercorns popping, eyes watering, Dougie stared at her in astonishment. There was no warm glow in the dark eyes now. Her
beautiful face was unblinking, like that of a form-filling bureaucrat anticipating a yes or no answer.

‘Is this a movie role?’ Dougie had a sudden image of himself taking part in a big Bollywood dance scene, wearing gold
dhoti
and chiffon shirt, possibly matched with a bearskin hat and hussar jacket. As far as he was aware very few non-Indian actors starred in the industry’s films, and
those who did played baddies. He wasn’t convinced it would be his greatest career move.

‘This is not an acting part, Mr Everett. This is what you English call “sport”.’

He took a moment to run this around in his head, now seeing himself in safari suit and pith helmet, which was no less ridiculous than the Dick Whittington boots, leather leggings and an S&M waistcoat he was already
wearing when he came to think about it.

‘And what exactly would this sport involve?’ he humoured her. It was sounding James Bond again, although he doubted anything could come close to the twelve big-budget, prime-time, sixty-minute episodes of lush cinematography that his agent was lining up, and for which he would share the screen with several Oscar-winners.

‘Seth is in the process
of purchasing one of the best sporting estates in England. “Blood sports”, I believe you call them: hunting, shooting and fishing.’ The eyes flashed again, not so warmly this time.

‘Field sports,’ he corrected lightly. ‘Blood sports, like bullfighting and bear-baiting, are quite different.’ Dougie’s limited knowledge of Indian culture told him that Sikhs and Hindus were against killing
things on religious grounds, but perhaps that was just cows.

‘I apologize,
field sports
.’ She spoke the words like a newsreader pronouncing the particularly difficult name of a Middle Eastern country. ‘Seth has many business associates who enjoy these sporting activities, and he wishes to entertain them at his new residence. There is much work to be done, but we believe that the sport will
be possible to arrange very swiftly.’ She consulted her electronic pad, swiping the screen to find the relevant notes. ‘The bank and lake fishing and game shoots are already professionally run, but there has not been a hound pack there for many years, we believe.’

‘Well, British Parliament banned hunting with dogs.’ He tried a scallop, which was so light and delicious it seemed to disappear
on his tongue, leaving tiny sweet fireworks of flavour partying in his mouth.

‘We are aware of the law.’ She smiled coolly. ‘There are kennels and stabling that were once used by a local hunt.’ Her long fingers swiped again as she consulted her notes. ‘That pack amalgamated with another and moved out at the time of the ban, although they still hold meetings and hunt fox on the estate.’

‘They follow pre-laid scent trails, these days,’ Dougie corrected kindly. ‘And they’re “meets”, not meetings.’

‘This is, of course, your field of expertise. You were quoted saying recently that you would like to hunt your own pack.’

He thought back to the drunken lunch during which his publicist had spent the entire dessert course frantically making throat-cutting gestures
at him from behind the interviewer’s back. The British tabloids had predictably had a field day after the feature had come out, digging up a photo of Dougie on Harvey at a Boxing Day meet years ago with the usual background about his father’s love of field sports. He’d taken a battering from social media trolls and anti-hunting activists afterwards, and from Kiki, who told him to wise up on his PR,
although she fell silent when one of Hollywood’s biggest producers sent a personal invitation for Dougie to join him in fielding his exclusive private pack in pursuit of coyote.

‘I grew up around hunting,’ he told Dollar now. ‘It’s a great family passion.’ The memory of his day spent alongside his father jumping the Orthopaedics made him smile afresh.

‘You would have a team working
for you, and you will have total autonomy. There will be excellent accommodation, a generous budget and a great deal of free time.’ Her eyes did their warm, hypnotic speed-glow. ‘This would be a
very
well-paid job.’

Dougie opened his mouth to decline regretfully but found he wanted to savour for a little longer the parallel life he was being offered amid James Bond subterfuge. This was
a job he could do blindfold, and had always longed to fulfil – not a field master like his father, which any good horseman with a bit of free time and experience could manage, charming landowners and hollering at small children on bolting ponies as he led the mounted field around headlands and over jumps while the hounds ran the direct line of the scent. A huntsman ran with the hounds far ahead of
the field; he trained and worked the pack himself; he was a breed apart. It was a role Dougie had idolized as a pony-kicking child, thundering through mud and birch, and understood far better than any swashbuckling Lothario he played on screen today. It had been among his many boyhood dream jobs that had been thwarted when his father insisted he go to officer training, Vaughan Everett curtly pointing
out that hunt staff are paid a pittance and are technically ‘servants’. In fairness, his son’s other dream jobs had also included astronaut, lion tamer and, of course, British Secret Service agent with a licence to kill. This job almost ticked two of the four ambitions.