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Chapter One

Vegetarians at the Bottom of the Garden

 

Harry Harrington was one of the best-known celebrity chefs in the country. He had a kind, inquisitive face, a short beard, wire-frame glasses, and longish brown hair. His body was more enamoured with cake than fastidious gym work, but a certain sort of domesticated, middle-aged woman lusted after him, mainly for his homely comforts, but also for the careworn expression in his blue eyes that said life sometimes beat him with a cudgel. They sensed, somehow, that Harry may have had money, fame, and a showbiz career, but he wasn’t happy. Something was fundamentally wrong.

    “We’ve got trouble,” Stuart Short said with a thoughtful stroke of his ridiculous goatee. Stuart was Harry’s portly, ginger-haired producer.

    “Trouble?” Harry said.

    “There’s a gang of protestors outside the house. Seems like a right bunch of lunatics.”

    “Lunatics!” Harry exclaimed. He chanced a nervous glance through the leaded windows and saw oddly dressed strangers milling about in the field across the lane. “Do you think they’re dangerous?”

    They were in the living room of a beautiful, old farmhouse, filled with dark oak beams, whitewashed walls, and inglenook fireplaces. Its plethora of quaint period detail made it the perfect backdrop to Harry’s cookery show, Hog Heaven.

    “Calm down. They’re probably just a bunch of harmless crusties. Came here last night and set up camp in the big field.”

Harry’s wife, Tabatha, stood nearby. She was a tall, fashionably thin blonde in her mid-thirties. It was early morning, but Tabatha was fully made up with diamond earrings. She was dressed as if at a dinner party. Her face would have been pretty if she hadn’t been flaring her nostrils and glaring at Harry, which was something she did quite often. She stamped her foot on the wooden floor. “You’re a coward, Harry Harrington. Stop looking so bloody scared.”

    “I’m not scared.”

    “Why don’t you assert yourself for once? Go out there now and tell them to bugger off.”

    Stuart shook his head. “I wouldn’t advise it, Harry. One of the crew told them to go away, and a big beefy chap built like a gorilla chased him and threatened to pound his head in.”

    “I thought you said they were harmless?” Harry said with alarm. “What are they protesting about?”

    “They told us they’re animal lovers and don’t approve of our show. Said they’re called The Animal Avengers or some such nonsense. Some sort of crackpot protest group, I guess. I said they were harmless … but I’m not so sure.”

    “What do you mean?”

    “They were cursing and threatening and calling you some awful names. Castration was mentioned. I think you should be careful. They might decide to do something dangerous when they see the famous Harry Harrington for the first time.”

    “Something like what?” Harry said, frowning.

    “I’m just saying that you’re well known. You’re seen as some sort of carnivorous hate figure in those circles.”

    “Am I?” Harry said, trying to look brave and unconvinced but secretly imagining his late-night abduction by shotgun and subsequent castration in an arcane animal rights vengeance ceremony.

    “Of course you are. You’re Harry Harrington, the evil chef who cooks meat, meat and yet more meat. The vegetarian’s nemesis. If they see you, they might go nuts.”

    Harry gulped and gave a resigned nod. He remembered seeing a slew of hysterical articles from some of the Sunday supplement magazines condemning him for being some sort of unreconstructed caveman carnivore who’d eat raw meat if he could. Harry groaned inwardly because Stuart was right. He’s been pushed in this particularly extreme direction in his career by an inability to say no and massive financial demands. His fevered imagination quickly conjured up a certain type of self-righteous and mentally obsessive protestor who’d consider those articles a rallying cry for his head. A call to arms. A justification for acts of unspeakable violence on softer parts that were easily cut off.

    “Anyway,” Stuart said impatiently, “you have to go outside now and get past them.”

    “Didn’t you just say they were dangerous? I can’t film with a broken nose. Or intimate parts missing.”

    “Never mind that. You must go to the portacabin up the lane and see the makeup girl, then scoot back here to film the pork and leek casserole scene in the kitchen. The show’s schedule doesn’t stop for anything.”

    “But what about the gorilla man? Don’t I get bodyguards?”

    “You’re not the P.M. Any hassles, just run as fast as you can.” Stuart looked at his watch. “I’ve got to see Jessica now. She got a hot idea for the show, apparently.” He smiled brusquely and turned to leave.

    “But I’m sure my contract doesn’t cover castration …” Harry said in a pleading voice.

    Stuart ignored him and left the room.

*

Outside the farmhouse, across the hedgerow-flanked lane that ran past the front garden, was a large open field. On it was a collection of six tents pitched near the wooden entrance gate. Sitting outside the tents, enjoying the bright warmth of the mid-morning summer sunshine, were the nine protestors collectively known as The Animal Avengers. They were dressed in colourful t-shirts and trousers made from materials that did not involve any animal parts, and they wore non-leather sandals.

    They had arrived the previous evening in their battered collection of vans. For supper, they’d cooked a homemade Indian soup called Rasam, which contained herbs, spices and vegetables they’d grown in their allotment, over a fire made from faggots they’d collected from the nearby woods. The effort of foraging about the land, stripping trees and building a fire had caused their hands, faces, and most of their clothes to be covered with a grubby earthiness, which was just how they liked it.      For the time being, they were away from their jobs in offices and factories and were now at one with the land.

Sitting cross-legged in the centre of the group with a pair of bongo drums between his legs was their leader, Matt Ostle. He was a thin, wiry man in his early thirties with a short beard and dreadlocks. He was an extremist who took his alternative lifestyle very seriously. As well as being a strict non-animal eater, he was also an environmentalist who lived in a forest in a tumbledown wooden house he’d built himself. The electricity was from a bank of solar panels. He didn’t own a television because he disagreed with the content of most programs. He refused to drive the vans due to their environmental impact and wouldn’t fly on a plane. His principles were so extreme that he found living in modern society very difficult, and like anyone with extreme views, he struggled to tolerate what he called 'evil enemy' lifestyles. He found solace and managed his anger through meditation, yoga, and composing his own brand of bloodthirsty folk music.

    “Listen to this one, my dears,” he said in his calm and deep voice. “Frank and I composed this shiny song last night whilst foraging in the beautiful wood. It’s a pleasantly hummable murder ballad about the grisly slaughter and disembowelment of Harry Harrington.” He then proceeded to bang out an alarmingly irregular rhythm on his bongo drums and sang a jolly song that described horrible acts inflicted upon Harry.

    Frank – a fellow would-be musician with a gruff manner and very short hair – began a musical accompaniment on his tin whistle. He was determined to use every note that the whistle could produce.

    Big Dave sat beside them. He was a huge, muscular man with ruddy cheeks and thin, wispy hair. Dave used to be a beef farmer until the BSE crisis sent him out of business. Watching his beloved herd being incinerated made him so disgusted and angry that he vowed not to eat meat again until he had found some authoritarian figure that was responsible for the carnage and pounded their head in. This violent ambition was always at the back of his mind. He had joined the Animal Avengers in the hope that they would help him find someone whom he could legitimately blame for the slaughter and then do some pounding. He was sure he would feel much better about the whole thing after that.

    His normally beetle-browed expression became even more beetle-browed as he listened to the music. Then he thought of a joke and smiled. “Who’s torturing that cat?” he said with a gruff chuckle. “I’ll pound his head in.”

    Matt’s wife, Henrietta, stopped peeling potatoes and listened, taking pains to appear as though she was enjoying herself. She was always very supportive of Matt’s ideas. “Don’t listen to grumpy old Dave. It’s very good music, darling. Lots of … demonstrative lyrics.”

    Henrietta came from a very rich and deeply conservative British family, but had been cut off and disowned after marrying Matt. She was preparing a vegetarian Indian feast for their supper. Henrietta had spent most of her youth as a traveller in India, and she told everyone many times that Kerala was her spiritual home. India was obviously much more mystical and multi-cultural than her birthplace of Henley-On-Thames. She was convinced that the Kerala connection made her look Eastern and exotic.

    Matt continued with his song, singing enthusiastically as he warmed to his theme.

 

Oh, Harry H. is an evil rake.

The blaggard of all Christendom.

His guts must be sliced with a hunting knife.

For animal rights and for all our sake.

*

Back in the farmhouse, Harry was about to leave for the makeup cabin when Tabatha stopped him. Her mildly irritated glare had developed into a petulant scowl. “Before you go, I want a word.”

    Harry looked at his ill-tempered wife and felt a terrible and long-endured weariness. “I’m late for makeup. What’s the matter now?” Harry was a mild-mannered, gentle man with an easy-going attitude to life and a hatred of this shallow and pretentious showbiz world he’d been swallowed up in. How he’d managed to end up marrying a woman who was his exact opposite was one of the great unsolved mysteries of his life.

    “Why the hell did you agree to come and film out here in this awful place? It’s the absolute pits. So remote and desolate. A Siberian gulag. The dark side of the Moon.”

    “It’s Cornwall. The show needed a picturesque and rural location. This place fits the bill.”

    “No decent hairdressers, no cinema, no nightclubs, not one fancy restaurant. Just endless empty fields and that crusty old village of the damned.”

    “Chipping-Magna’s charming. And there’s plenty of walking and fresh air.”

    “Do I look like I walk? And the air has a definite hint of pig dung. You’d better talk to the TV company and get our next series filmed in Paris.” Tabatha flicked back her mane of blonde hair in a defiant manner. “I have a very important reason for going to Paris.”

    “What reason?”

    “An extremely important reason that I’m not going to discuss with you. Let’s just say we’re going.”

    “We can’t go anywhere. Don’t you know anything about television?” Harry said with a weary sigh. He was sure he’d been through all this a hundred times before. “Remember the concept I sold?”

    Tabatha glared at him like he was an idiot and shook her head.

    “The show is supposed to be about escaping to Cornwall to a rural idyll to raise pigs and do some good traditional British cooking. We can’t just suddenly and magically be transported to France. The viewers will think they’ve tuned in to the wrong program.”

    Tabatha looked blasé and shook her head. “We’re going.”

    Harry clenched his teeth and took a few deep breaths. He felt so weary. Weary of her constant demands to the point of exhaustion. It seemed to him that she wanted to spend her every waking moment berating him for one thing or another.          What had happened to his devoted, happy wife? Had her charm only ever been an act? Had some man-hating demon possessed her? He took a few more practised breaths and tried to calm down, tried not to be argumentative. He knew from experience that their confrontations quickly degenerated into something horrible. He didn’t like confrontations. How had he married the confrontation queen?

    “If you don’t do as I say, then you know what’ll happen,” Tabatha said. “I’ll have to continue with the punishment. And you hate the punishment.”

    Despite the regular breathing, learnt from his yoga classes, Harry felt a worryingly hard knot of stress form in his chest. The punishment was her latest ploy to get her own way. She’d been doing it for quite a few weeks now, every night. It was killing him, but he was determined not to let her win. But then he mulled over her evil punishment ploy and the unwholesome effect it was having on his libido – he was ashamed to admit that he was plagued with permanent and desperate thoughts of fornication – and before he knew it, he’d suddenly blurted out, “Jesus Christ, woman! Stop with this bloody punishment thing! You’re killing me! It’s not natural!”

    Tabatha’s eighteen-year-old daughter Rosie, who was sitting on the other side of the room, suddenly jumped to her feet. Despite being a pretty teenager, she didn’t feature much in the show because she wasn’t as photogenic as Harry or Tabatha. She dressed primly and plainly with no makeup and preferred to keep her hair in a tight bun. She’d been studying them silently, eyeing them both with a look of gloomy resentment, but now felt that she had to interrupt.

    “Don’t you dare take the Lord’s name in vain!” Rosie was devoutly religious. She believed with obsessive conviction that God’s name should never be taken in vain. It was one of the Ten Commandments, and she understood that if people lived their lives strictly by these wise instructions, then there’d be a lot less arguing in the world, hopefully, less between her mother and Harry.

    “You’re not banging on about Jesus again, are you, sweetie?” Tabatha said.

    “At least he loves me. We can’t move. If we go away from here, then I won’t be able to see my friends from the church.”        Rosie’s spare time was spent at the local evangelical church, where she was part of a youth group.

    “We’ve only been living here six months. That’s how long you’ve known those funny church people. Why do you want to hang around with a bunch of God squadders anyway? They’re weird.”

    “Mother! How dare you say such horrible things about my friends!”

    “If you’re referring to those goody-goody creeps you keep bringing back to the house, then I’m afraid they’re extremely weird. What can I say? One of them explained to me what a parable was the other day. A bloody parable! All I did was ask if he’d like a cup of tea. Another wanted to know if Jesus is my friend. I don’t like it. I want to sit and relax in my own house without being harangued by young Christians. It’s not on.”

    Rosie’s face flushed red.

    “Can you both please stop this!” Harry said through gritted teeth. His stress levels were now at boiling point. He took a few more deep breaths and rubbed his forehead. Something was going to happen to change his torturous marriage. He knew it was only a matter of time. Something drastic. Something daring and life-changing. But he didn’t really know what that something was going to be.

    Tabatha ignored him. She’d been planning to have her say about the Christian invasion for ages and wasn’t going to stop now. “And you must admit that they’ve absolutely no fashion sense whatsoever. They dress just like you, sweetie. I told some of them that Jesus wouldn’t hang out with nerds, and they didn’t laugh. No sense of humour, you see. Do you really have to bring so many of the little buggers to the house, sweetie? You’re not doing naughties in the bedroom, are you?”

    Rosie’s lips puckered. She was about to burst into tears. “You know I don’t believe in sex before marriage. Not that it’s any of your business.”

    Tabatha studied her daughter thoughtfully. “What’s all this sudden obsession with church anyway? I only hope it’s just a phase.”

    Rosie sobbed, and her eyes welled up. “I think that both of you are evil people. I wish you could see what horribly debased morals you both have. How can you even consider taking me away from my friends? We all love Jesus. But I hate you two.”

    She stormed off in a huff. They both watched Rosie disappear as she slammed the door. Harry wondered why she hated him when it was Tabatha doing all the insulting.

     “You know something, Tabby?” he said after a concerted effort to calm down. “You raise the art of nagging to a new level.”

    Tabatha looked over Harry’s shoulder at Stuart, who’d just come back into the room. She masked her seething resentment with a fake smile. Harry may have frustrated the hell out of her, but she liked to believe they were the consummate professionals who projected the perfect image of matrimonial harmony and quick-fire chemistry that made cooking even a pork casserole look exciting. She didn’t want Stuart the producer to see them bickering.

    “I’m going to get you for that last little comment, sweetie,” she whispered to Harry with a serene smile. “And you know exactly how I’m going to do it. The punishment will continue until I arrive in Paris. A man can’t tie a knot in it. Stuart’s here now, so we’ll talk about it later.”

    “Harry! Harry!” said an excited-looking Stuart. “Why aren’t you in makeup yet? Not scared of the protestors?”

“Just a little … discussion.”

    Stuart knew all about Harry’s marriage problems and tried his best to ignore them. It was only one of the many cracks in the show that he was trying to paper over. “Just before you go, I must tell you about Jessica’s idea. It’s a little piece of TV gold.”

    “What’s that?” Harry said, glad in a way to get some respite from Tabatha’s demands.

    “She’s been delving into local history and has come up with something rather interesting. Just listen to this little beauty. Tomorrow morning, we’re going to set up in the adjacent field and film you and Tabatha having a go at a rather interesting thing called Piglet Tossing. Mable’s got some piglets. We can use those.”

    “Piglet Whating?”

    “Piglet Tossing. That’s its name. Let me explain. It’s an old Cornish tradition, apparently. Until the Great War, it was performed in the village once a year by teams of husband and wife. It died out after the war because most of the husbands were killed in the trenches. There was no one around to throw the pigs. Tragic, really.”

    “Stuart, you’ve completely lost me. What’s this thing about again?”

    “The way Piglet Tossing used to work is brilliantly simple. The village gathered once a year on mid-summer’s morning. It’s August now, but we’ll just pretend. All the men and their wives formed teams of two. The husband threw a piglet, and the wife had to catch it. The team that threw their piglet the farthest won the prize. Simple as that.”

    “And what did they win?” Tabatha said.

    “On mid-summer’s evening, the winning couple took all the piglets down to the landlord’s biggest field and cooked a sumptuous spit-roast feast for the village. All the guests brought lots of presents for the couple: the piglets, of course, plus hay bales, fruit pies, vegetables, that sort of thing. They had country dancing and cider drinking late into the night. It’ll give our show a slice of genuine Cornish magic and teach the viewers a little bit of cultural history. Like I said, it’ll be TV gold.”

    “I’m not sure about this one, Stuart. What about the piglets?” Harry said with genuine concern.

    “No problem finding them. Mable’s got eight, I think.”

    Harry wasn’t worried about finding the piglets. He was worried about the pig that was the mother of those piglets. His thoughts turned to Mable, a Gloucester Old Spot that they kept in one of the outbuildings. When they arrived at the farm six months ago and brought in the initial batch of pigs and a breeding boar, Mable was part of the very first litter of piglets to be born. However, she was the runt and wasn’t being weaned by her mother, so to prevent her from dying, Harry took her into the farmhouse, kept her in a cardboard box filled with straw, and fed her milk every few hours. He did this to keep a precious farm commodity alive, but as the weeks went by and she became stronger, she was so funny, cute, and affectionate that she naturally became Harry’s beloved pet. When she grew up, he couldn’t bear to see Mable go to slaughter like the other pigs, so she was kept as a kind of mascot in her own special outbuilding. She had just produced a litter of eight piglets herself. Harry was horrified that these were the ones Stuart wanted to toss.

    “I’m not sure …” Harry said again. He knew he couldn’t tell Tabatha and Stuart about his continuing deep affection for Mable and her piglets. They would think he was mad.

    “Yes, you are. Listen. It’ll work brilliantly because you haven’t heard the best bit yet. We’re going to fix it so that you and Tabatha win the competition. We can capture some great shots of you cooking the piglets at the feast and finish it all off with a wild party featuring a bit of old-country dancing. It’ll look like you’re really engaging the local community. How fabulous is that?”

    “Stuart, come on now,” Tabatha said with an incredulous stare, “you’re not expecting me to manhandle one of those disgusting little creatures. It’ll absolutely destroy my nails. Do you know how much this manicure costs?” Tabatha waved her hand in his face. “And as for country dancing …”

    Harry couldn’t stop thinking about Mable. She had kind eyes and an intelligent face. He often went down to the outbuilding to feed her or muck her out and passed the time by talking to her about his problems. Unlike Tabatha, she was a good listener. Harry checked himself and smiled. He couldn’t believe he’d just compared his glamorous blonde wife unfavourably to a pig.

    Stuart looked at Tabatha a little sheepishly. “I’m afraid you have no choice. I’m sorry to have to tell you both, but our show has a serious problem.”

    Tabatha gave Stuart a haughty look of disdain. “I’m not man-handling a squirming little filthy creature, and that’s final. And I don’t country dance.”

    “It’s not really a good idea,” Harry said. “Throwing pigs around is not really lifestyle chic now, is it?”

Stuart’s face became grim. “I didn’t want to get all heavy on you both, but I’m the producer, and you have no choice. We’ve got to get out of our fix.”

    “What bloody fix!” Tabatha said.

    “Hang on, Tabby. Calm down. Let me explain.” Stuart held out his hands in placation. “This is a drastic measure, I know. And I can understand your reservations. However, we absolutely must come up with something. Some new angle that’ll pep up the new series.” He looked consolingly at Harry and added, “I’m afraid the ratings have dropped to catastrophically low levels. The show is in trouble, and we’ve got to pull ourselves back from the brink.”

    “What brink?” Tabatha said with a look of horror.

    Harry knew that his wife’s greatest wish was for the show to stay popular. He also knew, with some resentment, that part of his appeal was down to the fact that he was such a well-liked and respected TV personality. She needed the huge amount of cash the show generated to maintain her glamorous lifestyle, but, above all, she loved the fact that she appeared on TV and was considered a star in her own right.

    Harry looked grimly at Stuart. “What’s going on? You’re saying that my show is not doing well?”

    “It’s all down to our old rival on the other network and their show. You know the one, Posh Nosh.”

    “Rickie’s show?”

    “Yeah. You’ve got to hand it to Rickie Ogilvy. He’s a natural. That show of his has such a hip soundtrack, and the idea of Rickie living in a London flat with some sexy mates coming round every episode for a get-together is great, to be honest. They’re all so damn good-looking. The sexual chemistry is positively sparking between the girls and boys as they feed each other Rickie’s wasabi and sticky rice fish suppers. When he gets on that Harley with his tight trousers and rides down to the organic greengrocers, it’s TV gold.”

    “We’re just as good as that jumped-up little sous-chef,” Tabatha said angrily, “and everyone agrees that Harry is good-looking, in his own way.”

    Stuart nodded slowly but pulled his face like there was more to tell. “Yes, you’re right. One of the reasons why Hog Heaven got green-lighted in the first place was because of Harry’s charm. But Rickie’s show now has something else which I’m afraid we can’t compete with. The food on his show is simplified Japanese fusion, which has suddenly become incredibly hot.”

    “Spicy?”

    “Hot as in popular. The last series got shown stateside, and now Madonna and a host of young Hollywood starlets have started on his patented Raw Fish and Carrot diet. It’s sent his new series stratospheric at our expense. Our second series is airing in prime time, but it’s nose-dived. This third series has to get the fans back.”

    “Surely it can’t be all that bad for us,” Harry said. “My new book came out only last month.”

    Stuart clapped Harry on the shoulder and commiserated. “And so far, sales have been poor, Harry.”

    Harry and Tabatha were both shocked by the news that their program was in such trouble. They were silent for a few seconds as they tried to come to terms with it.

    “I know what we’ll do,” Tabatha said, suddenly brightening. “We’ll just switch to cooking Raw Fish and Carrot.”

    “We can’t do that,” Stuart said.

    “Why the hell not?”

    Stuart shook his head and said, “It doesn’t work like that on TV.”

    “Don’t be so bloody obtuse, you sound just like Harry.”

    “Our Harry here represents Cornish quaintness,” Stuart said, indicating Harry. “Hog Heaven is all about middle-class urbanites escaping from their daily office commute, moving out to the country and becoming a smallholder. Rather than bang away on their computer updating their spreadsheets all day, or whatever they do, the office drone viewers can dream about living in a beautiful tumbledown cottage, collecting wild mushrooms from the forest, swinging in a hammock on a balmy day, watching the pigs forage in the fields, and eating the delicious meat they’ve skilfully cooked. We know that in real life, they work long hours and rarely see their children, so we always show you two and Rosie as a loving family eating their evening meal together at a reasonable hour. The icing on the cake is supposed to be the cooking. The show’s carefully composed low-carb recipes, developed by Harry, are designed to help them stay slim and look good. That’s how it was sold. But it seems the low-carb, high-protein hunk of meat approach to cooking, as featured on our show, is fast becoming the proverbial dead duck. We’re stuck with a concept that needs a drastic push.”

    Harry gave Stuart a tortured yet resigned stare. “But even so … can’t we do something else besides throwing piglets?” He was plagued by a vision of Mable sporting a poignant expression of betrayal.

    Tabatha was horrified at the thought of plunging ratings. “Well, I think Stuart is just trying to save the show,” she said, giving Harry a hard look. “Why are you being so unhelpful? You’ve got to start being a little less obstructive and agree to do this Piglet Tossing thingy.”

    “What happened to breaking your nails?”

    “If that’s what we need to do to save the show, then I’ll sacrifice my nails. I think you should be more helpful and less sarcastic. I’m in favour of tossing the piglets.”  

    Harry looked at Tabatha’s self-satisfied face and realised that his stress levels were still running dangerously high. He just wanted to forget about everything, get away for a while and relax. But he knew there would be no respite until the series was finished. Tabatha and Stuart would make sure of that. He didn’t like the Piglet Tossing idea one bit, but his tired and stressed-out brain couldn’t think of a decent alternative.

    Tabatha and Stuart both looked at him impatiently.

    “Okay, okay!” Harry said. “We’ll do the bloody Piglet Tossing. I suppose we have no choice. I only hope it works.”

    “Good man, Harry. I knew you’d see sense in the end,” Stuart said, then mumbled under his breath, “The whole show’s future may be resting on it.”

    “What was that?”

    Stuart ignored Harry, checked his watch and became brusque and business-like. “Anyway, we’ve got to get on and film the next scene. The riggers have finished lighting the kitchen. You were due in makeup five minutes ago, so we’ve got to get you up the road and into the portacabin. When you’re done, I want you back in that kitchen as quick as you can to get a shot of you cooking that pork you butchered last night. Oh, and when you’re in makeup, you’ve got to think of an interesting and funny story to tell the camera whilst you’re prepping. And don’t forget to run from those bloody protestors if they get violent.”

    “Anything else?” Harry said with a careworn sigh. It was only mid-morning, but he was having a terrible day. Tabatha and Rosie had fallen out with him, and Stuart wanted to throw Mable’s piglets around in a pathetic attempt at recreating some arcane tradition for the sake of his apparently disastrous ratings. And now he had a potentially angry mob of veggies baying for his blood. Harry was sorely tempted to forget the schedule for the rest of the day and just go and see Mable and her piglets. He imagined himself lying in the hammock near her pigsty, reading a book, and giving her some feed. But he knew only too well that this idyllic dream of idleness would have to wait for a very long time. The filming schedule was incredibly tight. He had to get a move on to makeup.

    He reluctantly gave Stuart and Tabatha a quick nod and left the living room. He went through into the hallway – a riot of dark wood and faded William Morris wallpaper – and pulled on his wellington boots. With a deep and fearful feeling of dread, he prepared himself to go and see what the lunatic protestors had in store for him.

*

Outside in the field, a few meters away from the other protestors, under the dappled shade of an ancient oak, Lucy Vampling sat on a blanket outside the tent closest to the gate. She was a young woman with a full figure, strawberry blonde hair and a lustful, mischievous yet good-natured temperament. Lucy had been a member of The Animal Avengers for nearly two years, but she had a shockingly anti-vegetarian secret that she couldn’t reveal to them. Despite being a strict vegetarian and against any sort of animal cruelty, she absolutely loved watching Harry Harrington on TV and considered him to be sexy, in a strange sort of way. She had a collection of carefully collated DVDs of all the Hog Heaven shows ever screened and had watched them many times, dreaming happily about Harry’s kind face and thoughtful chat, but carefully fast-forwarding the parts where he attacked some poor animal’s corpse with a meat cleaver. She was very excited about coming to the set of Hog Heaven. She believed strongly in the vegetarian cause, but more than anything else, she desperately wanted to see Harry Harrington in the flesh.

    Sitting beside her on the blanket was her best friend, Patty. She was a thin, pale-faced woman who chain-smoked cigarettes from the moment she woke up to just before she went to bed. Even outside in a field on a bright and sunny day, she seemed to be partially obscured by a cloud of smoke as she took another deep puff of her cigarette.

    “Where’s Harry?” Lucy said impatiently to Patty. “Shall we break into the house and find him?”

    “Nope,” Patty said. “Couldn’t be bothered moving.” She took a quick puff. Smoke streamed out of her nostrils.

    Lucy sulked. “I want to see Harry.”

    At that moment, the door of the farmhouse opened, and Harry stepped out into the bright sunshine. As he walked slowly down the cobblestone path that ran through the wildflower-strewn garden, he looked cautiously across the road and over the hedgerows at the protestors in the field. When he got to the bottom of the path, he opened the front gate and stepped onto the lane. Then he turned and headed off towards the makeup van – the portacabin a hundred meters up the road in an adjacent field.

    Frank stopped playing his tin whistle, Matt stopped hitting his bongos, and Henrietta stopped peeling potatoes. All the Animal Avengers trained their eyes keenly on Harry Harrington. Here was the man who had done more than anyone else to put back the cause of vegetarianism. His evil show had positively revelled in total carnage. It filmed Harry hacking away with total abandon at dead animal flesh with all the enthusiasm of a psychopath in an adult-rated horror film. 

    “You Murderer!” Matt Ostle shouted, angrily shaking his fist.

    “Justice for the sacred pig!” Henrietta shouted.

    “Tosser!” Frank balled.

    “I’m going to pound your head in!” Big Dave shouted with a devilish grin.

    Harry pretended he didn’t hear any of this but decided he’d better take Stuart’s advice and started trotting.

    “Did you hear me? I’m going to pound your head in!” Big Dave shouted again in a gruff voice.

Harry’s trot increased to a jog as he made his way along the road. He could see the size of the man who had just shouted at him and couldn’t understand how he looked as formidable as he did on a diet of vegetables alone. But then again, gorillas are vegetarian, and this man resembled one of those powerful creatures more than anything else. He wondered if he was going to get out of the makeup van and back to the farmhouse alive.

    Lucy Vampling watched Harry’s every step with intense interest. She was flashing her eyes with ill-disguised lust and ran her tongue over her full red lips. Lucy had a problem with sex. Namely, she couldn’t get enough of it.

    Patty observed her. “Hey, Luce, why are you drooling like that?”

    Lucy looked at her and smiled coyly.

    Patty’s eyes narrowed as she registered comprehension. “Oh, I see. You sly old cow. I know what you’re thinking.” She grinned and took a triumphant puff of her cigarette.

    After a moment’s hesitation, Lucy said, “Yeah, you’re right. I’ll tell you all about it, Patty, but you’ve got to promise to keep it secret from the others. I know what you’re like.”

    Patty lit another cigarette. “Sure.”

    “I’ve got this thing for him.”

    “No way! Mister Slack Jaw Carnivore. He looks like Barbie’s boyfriend, Ken, but with a beard and glasses. A nerdy Ken.”

    “He’s cute.”

    “Still looks like a bearded Ken. And Ken isn’t well hung.”

    “Anyway, listen, I’ve got a plan.”

    Patty blew smoke from her nose like a dragon. “Have you now?”

    “I’ve decided that being on this protest is my big chance. I’m going to get Harry Harrington into bed.”

    “How are you going to do that, Luce?”

    “You can be certain that I’m going to find some way to get at him. And when I do, I’m going to give that man the most amazing time he’s ever had. I’m going to make his ears pop. I’m going to make him beg for mercy. I’m going to knock him into the middle of next week. I’m going to make it my mission to give him the sexual experience of his life. I’m going to crash into his life and turn his whole world upside down!”

    They both chuckled and turned to watch Harry sprint over to the portacabin and go inside. He was still looking furtively over his shoulder to check that Big Dave hadn’t decided to chase him and follow up on the head-pounding threat.