A Passion So Deadly

Two

Freddie Lange roared the big four-wheel drive into the farmyard, tyres squealing on wet cobbles. As he skidded to a halt he began to shout so loudly and in such a state of panic that his voice came out in a kind of squeak.

‘Constance, Constance!’ His voice strengthened somewhat as he steadied his breath, forcing the power from his lungs. ‘It’s Harley Phillips, he’s under the tractor. His arm... he’s losing blood... Constance...’

Freddie was close to hysteria. The words tumbled out. Inarticulate in his haste and distress, he began to run towards the big old farmhouse. He was a tall handsome man, complexion tanned and made ruddy by years of outdoor work, his abundant shock of longish hair — yellow fading into silver-grey — plastered to his skull by the rain which had been falling steadily all morning. It was a particularly dreadful day for the end of August and Freddie had already had a good soaking. His physical discomfort — he had not expected to be exposed to the elements, he’d forgotten his cap and was wearing just a tweed jacket, now sodden, over equally wet overalls — was quite possibly increasing his panic.

The kitchen door opened just as he reached the back steps.

There stood Constance, a handsome woman in her forties, short bouncy dark hair framing a well-boned intelligent face. Her pale hazel eyes were calm and kind. The very sight of her was soothing to Freddie. She must have heard him from inside the house. Already she had in her hand the emergency medical kit which she kept in the kitchen cupboard and on her feet a pair of sturdy boots. She took her Barbour jacket from the hook by the door, slung it over her shoulders, and then placed her free hand firmly on her husband’s arm.

Her skin was almost ageless in appearance, creamy in texture and remarkably unlined, her mouth a full, strong line.

‘It’s all right, Freddie,’ she said. Her voice was well-modulated and calm as her eyes. She spoke English with the perfectly enunciated care usually applied only by those who have had to learn it as a second language. ‘Just take me there.’

‘Right.’

Freddie wiped his face with one hand, brushing away a mixture of rainwater and sweat. He found he was breathing more easily already and realised as he spoke that much of the panic had gone from his voice.

Nonetheless he ran to the vehicle, a Land Rover, fumbling with the door catch in his haste to be behind the wheel again. His wife merely walked purposefully, ignoring the rain, and yet she somehow managed to be installed in the passenger seat before he had hoisted himself into the car.

This time she lay a hand on his knee.

‘Don’t drive like a maniac. We won’t help Harley if we end up in a ditch.’

He nodded, struggling for control. He grated the gears trying to find reverse but ultimately managed to manoeuvre his way out of the yard with a little more aplomb than the manner in which he had entered it.

‘Now talk to me,’ Constance instructed when they were safely on their way. ‘First, someone has called for an ambulance, I hope?’

Freddie nodded again. He was peering anxiously ahead, windscreen wipers on full speed to give him the best possible vision in appalling conditions. ‘Bill did it on my mobile, but they could take ages, you know what they’re like...’

Constant interrupted him. He knew he was starting to babble again. ‘Don’t worry about that,’ she said. ‘Just tell me what happened and what condition Harley is in. The more I know before I get there, the better prepared I’ll be.’

She could hear the boy’s screams from inside the Land Rover as Freddie roared it across Brook Meadow. The scene ahead was not a pretty one.

Young Harley’s tractor had somehow tipped itself off the edge of the steeply angled expanse of land which he had been ploughing, its weight carrying it through the bushes and scrubland lining the edge of a steep drop leading down to the little stream at the bottom. The tractor had left a deep furrow in the red earth and already a stream of water was pouring down it.

Constance knew Harley well, and his family had worked for the Langes for generations. The lad was a good worker but inclined to be reckless. She guessed he would have been driving the tractor as fast as possible. This was not his first accident on the farm, but it looked like it might be his worst to date. The tractor had rolled down the steep-sided ditch and eventually come to a precarious upside-down halt, trapping Harley beneath it. The machine was fitted with a safety cage, but, as Constance knew well, these were worse than useless unless the workers wore their safety harnesses — and she doubted that any of them did.

Harley had been thrown out of the tractor but his left arm had somehow become caught in the tangled metal and was trapped beneath the six-ton machine. His problems were not helped by the awkward spot in which he and his tractor had ultimately landed. Most worryingly of all, the tractor looked as if it could fall further on top of Harley, causing him even greater injury. And the weather conditions naturally made matters worse. Two other Chalmpton farmworkers were already trying to free the injured young man. One of them, Harley’s father, Norton, whose obvious distress and blind panic were not helping the situation, was attempting to tow off the wreckage and free Harley, while herdsman Bill Macintyre frantically pulled and pushed at bits of twisted machinery with his bare hands.

Constance jumped quickly out of the Land Rover and summed up the scene at once. Harley’s arm looked as if it had been nearly severed just above the elbow and the buckled tractor crushing it was, in fact, also probably holding the artery together. Every time the tractor moved, a fraction the blood from the terrible injury gushed out and young Harley’s screams of agony grew more frantic. If Norton Phillips actually succeeded in towing off the crashed machine it looked likely his son would bleed to death.

‘Stop!’ commanded Constance.

The engine of the second tractor was howling, its wheels cutting great muddy gouges in the soft earth, Harley’s screams of pain were ear-piercing, his father and Bill Macintyre were shouting misguided instructions at each other, the engine of the Land Rover was still running. The combined noise was deafening. Yet, although Constance barely raised her voice, the response was immediate.

Norton Phillips at once ceased his rescue attempt, and pushed the tractor gear shift into neutral. Bill Macintyre, who had been crouched alongside Harley, stood up and faced Constance, quiet now, waiting for further instructions. Freddie switched off the Land Rover engine. Even Harley’s frenzied screams subsided into muffled sobs.

The attention of all four men was now focused on Constance. There was no longer any question about who was in charge. Even poor injured Harley was calmer. Part of this effect, which Constance knew very well she so often seemed to have on people although she could not explain how or why, might have been due to her early training as a nurse. But it was more than that. There was something within Constance which set her aside from others on occasions like this. In a crisis, almost any crisis, there could be few people in the world better to have on your side than Constance Lange.

She moved forward carefully towards the edge of the deep ditch, taking into account every aspect of the situation. Harley remained in danger of further injury if the tractor remained where it was. But if it was pulled away the result could be just as disastrous for him.

‘Lock on the brakes, Norton, make sure that tractor is not going to move one centimetre and then cut the engine,’ Constance instructed.

She slithered down the slope towards Harley. Naturally agile, she made it look easy, and she crouched beside him, ignoring the six tons of finely balanced machinery looming above.

‘You know, young Harley, sometimes I don’t think you should be let out at all,’ she said. And the gentle smile and the warmth in her voice belied the possible harshness of her words.

Almost casually she lay her hands on Harley’s forehead, soothing him and at the same time ascertaining to her relief that the blood on his face, at least, came only from superficial scratches.

She began to open her medical bag. She had the makings of a tourniquet, a bandage and a metal ruler, which she had always carried since having to improvise desperately when called to the scene of a similar injury some years earlier. The very idea of deliberately cutting off someone’s blood supply thoroughly frightened her actually — although she would never show it. But during the brief journey in the Land Rover her husband’s frantic description of the accident had left her in little doubt of what would be required.

Her steady gaze never left Harley’s face. The boy’s bulging blue eyes, racked with pain and fear, cleared, just slightly. He even stopped sobbing.

‘I’m sorry, Mrs Lange,’ he said. An automatic response.

‘So you jolly well should be — that’s a tractor, not a scrambling bike you’ve got there.’

‘It’s a lot bleddy ’eavier too,’ muttered Harley through clenched teeth. Seconds ago, although conscious throughout his dreadful ordeal, he had been incapable of coherent speech. Now he was almost making a joke.

‘You’ve always been a brave lad, Harley,’ said Constance. ‘Daft as a brush, but brave.’

She glanced at the sky. Thankfully the rain seemed to be easing but Harley was already wet through and lying in an unpleasant bed of wet mud. The tractor creaked and shifted slightly of its own accord. Harley winced, but made no sound.

Constance turned to her husband, at her side in close attendance as usual.

‘When I say twist, twist,’ she ordered.

The tourniquet was already in place around the top of Harley’s arm. All the time Constance had been indulging in apparent light banter with the boy, her hands had been busily at work.

When the job was completed she rocked back on her heels. ‘I think we can get that tractor off you safely now Harley. It’s going to hurt. Are you ready?’

Harley looked at her with wide trusting eyes. ‘If you say so, Mrs Lange,’ he replied.

‘Right then,’ said Constance. With one arm she cradled the young man’s head, his mud-streaked ginger curls spread over her jacket sleeve, and with her free hand she took his uninjured one.

‘Hang on to me,’ she commanded, and glancing at her patient’s father, ‘Forward as smooth as you can, Norton.’

The wheels screeched again, sending great showers of wet mud flying across the field, spraying the rescuers. Eventually the tractor lurched forward, dragging the mangled wreckage off the injured boy’s arm.

Constance knew that the pain must be terrible for Harley as his mangled hand and lower arm were freed and, even allowing for the tourniquet, the life flowed back into the partially numbed area. But this time, lying within the calming influence of her cradling arm, Harley did not even cry out. There were no more screams, but the boy gripped Constance’s hand so tightly that his fingernails dug into her flesh. She did not flinch. She could see that his teeth were clenched and he had bitten the side of his lip. A trickle of fresh blood ran down his chin. His eyes spoke volumes.

‘I’ve got you, Harley, the worst is over now,’ she said softly.

Norton had parked the tractor again and was by her side, looking anxiously at his son.

‘What do us do now, Missus? Shall us get ’ee up the bank?’

Constance shook her head. But she was aware that Harley was starting to shiver violently. The rain had slowed to just a light drizzle now, but the damp chill in the air remained. It was hard to believe it was still August. Harley, half-buried in the thick wet mud, was beginning to be severely affected both by shock and cold.

He was also now clutching his side with his uninjured hand and Constance suspected that he had broken ribs at the very least and, judging from the awkward angle in which he was lying, he could have a damaged back as well.

‘We’d be best not to move him till the ambulance arrives,’ she said. ‘We don’t want to risk any change of position that might cause him to lose more blood, and I’d like him properly checked out for any other injuries. We need to keep him as warm and dry as possible, though, so fetch me the rug from the back of the Land Rover.’

As she spoke she slipped out of her Barbour jacket and wrapped it around Harley as best she could without further disturbing his broken body.

‘I’ll have your coats too, you guys,’ she ordered. ‘Just pile them on him.’

It was only fifteen minutes later when they heard the ambulance siren wailing in the distance on the road through the village, but it seemed for ever.

‘I’ll go to the lane gate,’ said Freddie as, able to think properly again now, he climbed behind the wheel of the Land Rover. ‘They’ll never get an ambulance across a ploughed field in the state of this.’

Minutes later he was back with two paramedics — a tall young man, boyish-faced but prematurely balding, and his woman partner, small, slight, possibly even younger, but somehow clearly the senior — laden down with equipment.

‘Jesus,’ said the female paramedic peering down the precipice-sided ditch. ‘How did you get yourself in this mess then, mate?’

‘That’s just what I’ve been asking him,’ said Constance.

Harley managed a wan smile.

The paramedics were in control within minutes. They did not touch the tourniquet. Harley was quickly checked from head to toe before being given a powerful pain-killing injection, wrapped in warm life-restoring foil and carefully loaded on to a stretcher. Acting on instructions from the paramedics the farm workers and Freddie helped carry Harley on the stretcher up to the field and then load him into the back of the Land Rover.

‘Who did the tourniquet?’ asked the woman paramedic.

‘She did,’ said Freddie, glowing with pride as usual and gesturing towards his wife who was standing quietly to one side now, gratefully wrapped in her Barbour jacket once more.

‘Good job,’ said the paramedic. ‘He’s got a lot to thank you for, that young man.’

Constance smiled but did not speak.

‘He’ll be all right, you can save his arm, can’t you... can’t you?’ she heard Norton Phillips ask over and over again as he clambered into the Land Rover alongside his son.

There was no answer from the medical team.

Constance sighed. She was the practical one, the doer. She had attended so many emergencies locally. Always it was her they called for. And, although with the passage of time she considered herself to be no more than a competent first aider, her long-ago learned medical skills — she had been an SRN at Bristol Infirmary — were rarely allowed to go rusty for long. Nonetheless, when the moment of crisis was over she almost always experienced a kind of emptiness.

You could never do enough, she felt. Constance didn’t believe in miracles. She certainly knew enough to appreciate the extent of the damage to Harley’s arm — and it was his right arm too, unfortunately. The boy was a manual labourer, a farmworker, and never likely to be anything else. He needed that arm in full order.

The ambulance was belting off down the lane now, its siren wailing again. In the distance Constance heard her husband’s voice.

‘Come on, old girl. Let’s go home and put the kettle on. You’ve done a wonderful job, again.’

Constance inclined her head, smiling just a little. She was so used to holding everything together in an emergency, it was second nature to her. Perhaps it wasn’t that strange that she was inclined to suffer a reaction when it was all over. She wanted to be on her own for a bit, to regain her strength. It was also second nature to Constance never to show signs of weakness.

‘You know, I think I’ll walk back, if you don’t mind Freddie,’ she said lightly. ‘Stretch my legs. I could check that fence down by Marsh Wood where the cattle broke through yesterday, too.’

Freddie hesitated just a moment.

Constance glanced up at the sky. ‘It’s brightening up, I think we could have a lovely evening. The walk’ll do me good...’

Freddie smiled at her. ‘Of course,’ he said finally. ‘If that’s what you want.’

‘See you later then,’ said Connie, already setting off at a good pace.

‘Right.’ Freddie hesitated again. ‘And, thank you, love. I don’t know what we’d do without you...’

She waved her acknowledgement over her shoulder. He was a good man. She was a lucky woman and she knew it.

Before her stretched all the splendour of Somerset. The beautiful English oak in the top corner of Brook Meadow spread its lushly foliaged arms wide over the rolling field. Beyond it was a huge American oak, the second biggest in England, so Constance believed, which barely changed colour at all in the autumn and was always the last deciduous tree to drop its leaves — sometimes not until the new year.

The English oak would turn golden-red early this year, she suspected. September was still almost a week away and yet the weather had felt autumnal for days. But this particular day, that had earlier offered only more of the heavy rain which had been drenching the countryside for so long, was in the process of transforming itself. The skies had lightened almost simultaneously with the moment young Harley had been made safe in the ambulance.

Constance skirted around the edge of the ploughed field, meadow in name only nowadays. All was quiet at last. She relished the silence and the solitude. At the bottom end of the ploughed meadow, she turned off left through the little hunting gate and on through the woodland which had been partially cleared and replanted with saplings the previous spring.

There were enough big trees left to make it dark already within the wood. But a weak late-afternoon sun was now shining wetly — she could just see its glint in dappled patches through the foliage.

She could have walked home from Brook Meadow in half an hour across country had she taken the most direct route through the woods, crossing the footbridge over Chalmpton Water and along the lane behind the school. Instead she had chosen to detour, on the pretext of checking the fence down by Marsh Wood. In spite of the damp chill still in the air and the shock of the afternoon’s events, she was beginning, very slightly, to enjoy herself. Being alone in the country always did this to her. It was rejuvenation.

The cattle, one of the last remaining herds of pedigree Red Devon in the country, were grazing contentedly exactly where they should be. Constance spent longer than she needed counting their number, checking them out. Then she carefully inspected the hastily mended fence which would have to be properly rebuilt before winter set in, she reckoned.

There was a footpath that led from the site of the suspect fence alongside Chalmpton Water — little more than a stream but running swiftly now after the consistently heavy rainfall — through Marsh Wood, beneath Church Rise, and all the way back to Chalmpton Village Farm.

Constance liked this route, and set off almost eagerly along the path. At one point she noticed two flashes of brilliant blue over the water and stopped at once, peering through the bushes which partially masked the brook from her gaze. She had glimpsed, she knew, a pair of kingfishers in darting flight and the sight never failed to make her heart soar. She leaned against a tree trunk and remained there for several minutes, quite still, watching, almost trancelike.

Even after almost twenty-five years of marriage to a major landowner, Constance found it hard to believe that this beautiful place belonged to her and her husband. In fact they owned almost nine hundred acres of prime Somerset land. And unlike Freddie, who was the nearest thing Chalmpton Peverill had to a lord of the manor and whose family had farmed in the village for generations, Constance had not been born to the kind of world into which she had, however, so splendidly fitted. In fact, very far from it.

Constance had been brought up in children’s homes and a string of foster homes. Her Irish mother, whom Constance could barely remember, died when she was a toddler. She knew of no father.

There were things she could remember that she would rather forget — like the foster mother who had strapped her daily into a pushchair and then ignored her, and much later, the male helper at the children’s home who had tried to fondle her at every opportunity. She had borne any misuse silently and stoically, always remaining a bright, friendly, and hard-working child. And perhaps because of this, apart from a few unfortunate incidents, had been by and large treated as well as was possible within the framework in which she was brought up. There was never any bitterness about her. She blossomed into a pretty and intelligent teenager and seemed to rise easily above the hardships and loneliness of her early life.

Indeed Constance always appeared to want to help people. It seemed natural that upon leaving school she should train to be a nurse, helping to pay her way by working as a waitress in a local night-club — a lucrative and entertaining sideline she continued when possible even after qualifying. And Constance had never seemed to have any problem reconciling the two different sides to her life. In the hospital she was one person, in clubland another.

It was at the club that, at the age of twenty-one, she had met Freddie Lange, making, at a close friend’s stag do, a rare excursion into any kind of night life.

Constance sighed at the memory, no longer watching for the vivid flash of the kingfishers, but instead rolling back the years inside her head until it felt as if she were once again in the smoky club, the music bluesy jazz, the clientele just blurs through the haze. Except Freddie. Freddie had turned to thank her politely when she had brought drinks to his table, and she had realised at once how out of place he was in this environment.

‘Can I get you anything else?’ she had asked, uncomfortably aware that her voice might have sounded simpering.

He had looked into her eyes, deep and long, and made a remark that was quite out of character.

‘You can’t get me out of here, can you?’ he had asked, then blushed crimson. It was only much later that she learned how unlike him it was to be so forward or so rash.

The heir to Chalmpton Village Farm was good-looking — his shaggy mane of then bright-blond hair framing a narrow sensitive face — charming, ten years her senior and extraordinarily innocent.

‘Come this way,’ she had said with complete disregard to the employment which had so far served her so well.

She led him without ceremony to the door and then walked with him several blocks to her little bedsit behind the cemetery. It had all seemed so natural. Looking back she could hardly believe it. They had talked until the early hours, drinking coffee, and he had told her, for no particular reason as far as she could recall, that he was still a virgin. She had been astonished, not so much because he remained so at his age, as because of the straightforward trusting way in which he had imparted the information. The thought had crossed her mind that he was a closet gay, but somehow she had known instinctively that was not it, either. She suspected instead that Freddie, who also confessed in the beginning how awkward and ill at ease he had always felt previously in the company of women, had been damn near asexual before her.

They did not go to bed together that night nor for several weeks to come, although they immediately formed what seemed to her at least to be a very special relationship, with him driving to Bristol as frequently as he could after his day’s work on the family farm. She had been careful not to push him. She allowed him to take the lead. And when they finally slept together for the first time, on a balmy late-spring night after she had cooked him supper and served it outside on the little terrace she shared with the occupant of the room next door who fortuitously was hardly ever there, he had had no idea that she was not a virgin too.

He had made love with a passion born of genuinely deep feelings rather than knowledge or experience and she had been deeply moved by him. Afterwards he had held her so tightly she had thought that he might crush her ribs but she gave no complaint, not wanting to do or say anything that might spoil the precious moment.

‘You’re an angel,’ he told her again and again.

‘Hardly,’ she had replied. But she revealed very little about herself to him and he asked few questions. Certainly he never asked her about any other men there may have been.

Constance knew that in some ways her husband had seen in her in those days the woman he wanted her to be rather more than the woman she really had been. That was something that had never changed, but Constance hoped now that she had actually become the woman he had seen her to be. And she knew that, in most ways, she had.

Offered on a plate a life beyond her wildest dreams, she had somehow known instinctively how to behave and had become, to all appearances, she hoped, the perfect country wife.

Their marriage did seem to be blessed. Almost everything had gone right for them from the beginning. Three splendid children had been born just when desired and after remarkably trouble-free pregnancies. Elder daughter Charlotte was married, a mother herself now, and lived nearby in the village. Son William, destined to take over the farm one day, to continue the Lange tradition, was at agricultural college, and seventeen-year-old Helen, academically the brightest of the bunch, was at boarding-school studying for her A-levels and talking about becoming a doctor.

All three of their children, each of whom had inherited their father’s blond hair and their mother’s hazel eyes, had grown into fine young people, Constance reflected with some satisfaction. Naturally both she and Freddie were proud of their children. Their marriage and their family life was often envied, she knew, and was indeed just about as happy as it seemed. Constance made sure of that. It wasn’t exactly hard work. She loved Freddie Lange and she knew that he loved her too.

She smiled to herself. The reverie into the past was over now. Today, after the experience with Harley, after coping with the strain and tension she had so effectively kept to herself, she had really needed the breathing space of her walk. She had felt exhausted, drained. Already she was revived, the solid soil of Somerset beneath her feet, the glowing sky surrounding her, the peace of the grazing cattle, the sound of the rushing water and the flash of the kingfishers had all combined to soothe her.

She continued on her journey, but it was somehow nearly an hour and a half — and almost 5.30 p.m. - before she reached the farm, leaving the footpath which led on to the village to cross the paddock behind the farmhouse. From there she had a picture-book view of Chalmpton Peverill, the squat tower of its little Norman church rising above clustered cottages, many of them thatched, a row of council houses and a smattering of modem bungalows running in a straggly line off towards the main road. Unusually nowadays, Chalmpton still managed to retain not only a village pub but also its own shop and sub post office, outside which three women were gathered in animated conversation.

Constance smiled to herself. News travelled fast in a country village. She knew the women would be discussing Harley Phillips’ tractor accident. As she drew closer she could see that one of them was Marcia Spry, queen of the local gossips, a small elderly woman with tightly permed iron-grey hair framing a pinched and equally tight-lipped face. Constance did not want to get involved. She turned smartly away to her left, before Marcia’s laser-beam eyes locked in on her, and hurried into the garden of Chalmpton Village Farm through the gate in the far corner by the chicken coop.

The early evening sun, dropping now in the sky, bathed the old farmhouse in ochre light. It was actually an eighteenth-century Devon longhouse — there were several of them in this part of Somerset not far from the Devon border — with six bedrooms, three facing due west, three due east. The big square kitchen was on the east side, facing the sunrise, and the sitting room on the west, facing the sunset.

Her black Labrador, Josh, came tearing around the house from the back door and flung his not inconsiderable bulk at her legs. He rubbed against her, oozing affection but there was also reproach in his eyes as he looked up at her, as if well aware that she had been for a walk and not taken him with her. The ultimate betrayal.

Constance talked to the dog soothingly as she made her way around to the kitchen door. The Virginia creeper which covered most of that side of the house was already heralding autumn with its annual vibrant red-orange blaze, and every time her eyes fell upon it Constance never failed to appreciate its glory.

Inside it was quickly apparent that Freddie had abandoned the working day immediately after Harley had been taken to hospital. He was sitting at the kitchen table with his herdsman, Bill Macintyre. There was a teapot on the table and also a bottle of whisky. Freddie looked slightly flushed and the bottle was nearly empty. Constance didn’t blame him for having had a good drink.

‘Con, I was just beginning to worry about you,’ he greeted her. ‘Mac and I have been toasting young Harley’s health. Will you join us?’

He waved the whisky bottle. Constance glanced at it — a litre bottle of a cheap supermarket brand.

‘No fear,’ she said. ‘I don’t know how you can drink that stuff.’

She reached into the kitchen cupboard which housed the family’s alcohol supplies and found the remains of a bottle of Glenmorangie.

‘Some people have got no taste,’ she said lightly.

She poured herself a generous glass, which almost emptied the bottle, and drank deeply.

‘Here’s to you, my old darling,’ said Freddie, expansively raising his own glass in her direction. ‘You’ve done us proud again today, just like always.’

Later, when Mac the herdsman had departed, Constance and Freddie opened a second bottle of Glenmorangie and polished the bulk of it off after supper — unusual for them, but then, it had been an unusual day. The news from the hospital, when Constance called to check on Harley, was cautiously optimistic — certainly cheering after the drama of the day. At last they were able to relax, two people who loved each other and were content in each other’s company over-indulging somewhat following the satisfaction of a job well done.

In bed that night, and although just a little drunk, Freddie reached out for her. Their love-making was just how it always was, warm and tender, but perhaps, particularly on Freddie’s side, curiously polite. Constance enjoyed making love with Freddie, but she found it reassuring rather than erotic. She regarded it as a kind of ultimate cuddle and her enjoyment came from their mutual expression of deep affection more than from passionate sexual arousal.

As for Freddie — she knew that her husband’s entire sexuality, such as it was, had been awakened by her, and by her alone. She did find that erotic. She also knew that her husband was completely satisfied with his sex life with her, and that it never occurred to him that anyone, least of all Constance, could possibly ask for more.

The next morning Constance and Freddie were awakened by a persistent hammering on the front door. Constance sat up in bed quickly and a sharp pain shot across her forehead. She had quite a hangover.

She looked at her watch: 6.25 a.m. Whoever it was banging on the door had beaten the alarm clock by only five minutes. Beside her Freddie groaned slightly as he started to climb out of bed. A farmer through and through, he was an early riser by nature and was usually up and about a good half hour at least before the alarm woke Constance. Not today though. Freddie was suffering too.

She pulled on her dressing gown and followed him out on to the landing, watching from the top of the stairs, as, wearing only his pyjama trousers, he went downstairs and unlocked and opened the front door.

Norton Phillips stood there, unshaven, his face showing the strain, bags under his eyes, obviously still tense and wound up. He was, however, smiling broadly.

‘’E’s out of danger, ’e is, an’ they reckon they’ve saved ’is arm,’ he blurted out. ‘’T’won’t be good as new, but not far off with a bit of luck. ’E’s been in surgery most of the night. I had to tell ’ee soon as I knew for certain — and I wanted to do it face to face, like. I ’ope yer don’t mind...’

The words poured out, so eager was the farmhand to share his good news.

Constance called down to him from the upstairs landing. ‘Of course not, Norton, we’re absolutely delighted.’

She was telling no more than the truth. Both Constance and Freddie had a big soft spot for Norton, a true English eccentric whose whole personality radiated simple good nature. He was a motorcycling nut who had actually been christened Norman, but had unofficially changed his name to Norton in honour of his favourite British motorbike. Also, overcoming the mild protests of his wife, although he usually deferred to her in everything, he had even insisted on naming all of his seven children after motorbikes. As well as Harley there were sons, Davidson and Maxim, and four daughters, Triumph and Daytona, Aprilia and Suzuki. Iris Phillips had given in to him because she truly loved him — as did all who were close to him — but remained the only person in family or village who still resolutely called her husband Norman. And she had indignantly drawn the line at changing the family surname to Kawasaki.

Norton peered up the stairs at Constance. ‘There’s summat else, Mrs Lange, they said he might not even be alive at all if you hadn’t done what you did.’

The big brawny farm worker, bright ginger-headed like Harley and all his children, shuffled his feet, unused to expressing emotion. But his voice cracked as he spoke and there were tears in his eyes.

‘You didn’t just save the boy’s arm, missus, you saved ’is life, and us’ll never forget it.’

‘Oh, come on now, Norton,’ responded Constance, typically making light of it. ‘It’ll take more than some old tractor to do for that boy of yours.’

Norton continued as if she had not spoken. ‘The wife’ll be round, ’er’s still at the hospital. ’Er says you’m a saint. You know, like, what’s ’er name, Florrie... thigee nurse...’

‘Florence Nightingale,’ responded Freddie solemnly, shutting the door behind a swiftly departing Norton Phillips who had the rest of the village to relay the news to and probably before breakfast at that.

Constance, half-way down the stairs now, smiled but remained silent.

‘Right then, Florence, get the kettle on,’ ordered Freddie.

Arriving at his side, his wife responded with a playful punch and hoots of laughter.

After a few seconds of horseplay Freddie caught her by the shoulders and held her by the arms.

‘The luckiest day in my life was the day I met you,’ he told her.

It was something he quite frequently said and she never failed to be moved. There was a lump in her throat. But it was not Constance’s style to be too serious.

‘Get on, you great softy,’ she said. ‘If you want to show how much you care don’t just talk about it, fetch the Alka-Seltzer.’