Read Online A Country Affair by Rebecca Shaw - Free Book Online

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