Airs Above the Ground (4 page)

I asked, to keep him talking: ‘Why is it called the “Spanish” Riding School?’

‘What? Oh, because the Lipizzan stud was founded originally with Spanish horses. I think it’s about the oldest breed of horse we’ve got – they go right back to the Romans, Roman cavalry horses in Spain being crossed with Arabians and so on, and they were the best war-horses you could get, so they were sold right, left, and centre all over Europe in the Middle Ages, and when the Austrian Stud was founded at Lipizza they bought Spanish stock for it.’

‘Hence the name Lipizzan . . . Yes, I see. Didn’t Austria give up Lipizza to Italy after the first war, or something?’

He nodded. ‘One gathers it was a marvel the horses didn’t disappear altogether, when the Austrian Empire broke up. I suppose when the Republic was started nobody was much interested in a relic of, well, high life, but then they started giving public performances – they’d become state property, of course – and now the Austrians are frantically proud of them. The stud had a pretty ropy time at the end of the last war, too, when Vienna was bombarded; you’ll remember how Colonel
Podhajsky, the Director, got the stallions safely out of Vienna, then the mares were rescued from Czechoslovakia by the American Army, and the stud was set up in some barracks or other at Wels in the north, before they got re-settled at Piber.’

‘Yes, I knew that. Piber, was it? Where’s that? Somewhere in the south, isn’t it?’

‘It’s down in Styria, not far from Graz. What’s the matter?’

‘Nothing. Go on. Tell me about the stallions.’

He looked at me for a moment as if to see whether I was genuinely interested or not, then he went on, his manner a rather touching blend of didacticism and boyish enthusiasm.

‘Well, they’re bred at Piber, then when they’re four, the best of them go to Vienna to be trained. The others are sold. The ones at Vienna take years to train. I suppose one of the things that makes the performance so exciting isn’t just that it’s beautiful, but that—’ He glanced at me again, hesitated, then said almost shyly: ‘Well, don’t you think there’s something a bit thrilling about the – the
oldness
of it all, movements and figures passed down right from the year One, right from Xenophon, you know, the
Art of Horsemanship
– isn’t it rather marvellous to think of the idea of
haute école
going right back to the fifth century
B.C.
? But with the Lipizzans it isn’t even ordinary
haute école
; after all, you can see normal dressage anywhere at shows . . . what’s so beautiful is the way they’ve blended the dressage movements in to make the “figure dances” like the School Quadrille, and then of course the “airs above the ground”.’

‘The what? Oh, you mean those marvellous leaps the horses do.’

‘Yes, they call them the
Schulen uber der Erde
,’ said Timothy. ‘They’re as old as the hills, too. They were the old battle movements all the war-horses had to learn if they were to be any good – I mean, if you were using both hands for shield and sword or whatnot, you had to have a horse that would jump to order in any direction at a moment’s notice. Half a minute – if you’d like to look at these . . .’

He bent to fish in his holdall. We were coming down through cloud, steadily losing height, and already people here and there were making small movements of preparation for landing. But even the novelties of flying seemed lost to Timothy now.

He straightened up, slightly flushed, eagerly producing a book heavily illustrated by photographs.

‘See, there they are, these are the different figures.’ He pushed the hair back out of his eyes and spread the book open on my knee. ‘All the stallions can learn to do the ordinary dressage movements – like the
piaffe
, that’s a sort of high trot on the spot; and that lovely slow trot they call the Spanish trot – but I believe only the best of them go on to the actual leaps. There, see? They’re terribly hard to do, and some of the horses never do manage them. They take years to train, and develop terrific muscles for it . . . Look at that one there . . . he’s doing the
levade
, it looks just like rearing, except for the way he bends his hocks, but I believe it’s a terrific effort to hold.’

‘It looks it. That’s like the pose you see in the old statues, and old battle pictures and so on.’

‘That’s exactly what it is! If somebody took a swipe at you in battle your horse was supposed to go between you and him, poor thing.’

‘Well, I hope it had armour, that’s all,’ I said. ‘These are lovely, Tim. Oh, he’s a beauty, isn’t he? Look at that head, and those wise eyes. He knows a thing or two, that fellow.’

‘I’ll say,’ said Timothy. ‘That’s Pluto Theodorosta; he was the absolute tops, I believe; he died just recently. He was Colonel Podhajsky’s favourite. I don’t know which is the top stallion now, I think it’s Maestoso Mercurio. There, that’s him, and that one’s Maestoso Alea – you can see their heads are similar, coming from the same strain . . . That’s Conversano Bonavista – he was a favourite of the last Director’s. Look, isn’t this a marvellous photograph? That’s Neapolitano Petra doing the
courbette
; I believe it’s the most difficult leap of the lot. There was some story, I think it was about him; they were going to present him to some Eastern potentate or something, for a compliment, but his rider killed him, and then shot himself so they shouldn’t be parted.’

‘Good heavens. Is it true?’

‘I don’t know. They don’t put that sort of thing in any of the books about the stallions, but I heard quite a lot about them from an Austrian trainer who was in England for years, and used to visit my grandfather. I’ve probably got the story wrong, but actually, I wouldn’t be surprised. You know how you can get to feel about horses . . . and when you’ve worked as
these men do, every day with a horse for – oh, lord, for twenty years, perhaps . . .’

‘I believe you. There’s a dark one, Tim. I thought they were all white?’

‘He’s a bay, actually, Neapolitano Ancona. They used to be all colours, but they’ve gradually bred the colours out, all except the bay, and now there’s always one bay in the show by tradition.’

‘Where do they get their names? That’s two Neapolitanos and two Maestosos.’

‘They all come from six original stallions. They take their first name from the stallion, and the second from their dam.’

I said with genuine respect: ‘You seem to know an awful lot about them.’

He hesitated, flushed, and then said flatly: ‘I’m going to get a job there if they’ll have me. That’s why I came.’

‘Are there really six sorts of cancer?’ asked Tim.

‘Are there what?’ After his last bombshell, I had not felt called upon to make, or even capable of offering, any comment, and a pause had ensued, during which the flight hostess announced in German and English that we were approaching Vienna, and would we kindly fasten our seat belts and extinguish our cigarettes . . .

We dropped out of cloud, and, it seemed close below us now, flat, cropped stubble fields of Austria unrolled and tilted. Somewhere ahead in a hazy summer’s evening was Vienna, with her woods and her grey, girdling river.

And now Timothy appeared to be distracting me with cheerful small talk from the approaching terrors of landing.

‘I meant the six sorts of cancer you can get from smoking.’

‘Oh, I remember,’ I said. ‘Well, I expect there are, but don’t take it to heart, if you’re worrying about your father. I dare say he can take care of himself.’

‘I wasn’t worrying about him. At least, not in the sense you mean.’

There was something in his voice which told me that this was not, after all, merely a bit of distracting small talk. On the contrary, the carefully casual remark dangled in front of me like bait.

I rose to it. ‘Then what are you worrying about?’

‘Is your husband meeting you at the airport?’

‘No. He – I’m to get in touch with him after I get there. I’ve booked a room at a hotel. So if I may, I’ll beg a lift into town with your father and you. Unless, of course, you want to shake off your nursemaid before you meet him?’

But he didn’t smile. ‘Actually, he’s not meeting me.’

‘But your mother said—’

‘I know she did. But he’s not. I – I told her he was, it made it easier. It was a lie.’

‘I see. Well, then—’ Something in his expression stopped me. ‘Does it matter all that much?’ I asked.

‘That’s not all.’ He cleared his throat. ‘It’s – I thought it would be all right, but now it’s come to the point, I’m beginning to wonder. I dare say,’ he added with a sudden, fierce bitterness that disturbed
me, ‘I dare say she’s right, and I’m a stupid kid who shouldn’t be out loose, but I—’ He swallowed. ‘Did you say you’d got a hotel?’

‘Yes. It’s right in the centre. On the Stephansplatz, opposite St Stephen’s Cathedral. Why? Would you like to go there first with me?’

‘If you don’t mind.’

‘Fine,’ I said briskly, ‘we’ll do that. Look, have you room in your holdall for these magazines?’

‘Yes, here, let me. Mrs March—’

‘Vanessa, please. You know, you don’t have to tell me anything you don’t want to.’

‘I think I’d better.’

‘Here, Tim, relax, it can’t be as bad as that. What have you done? Forgotten to tell him which day you’re coming?’

‘It’s worse than that. He’s not even expecting me. He didn’t ask me to come at all. I made it all up, to get away. In fact,’ said Timothy desperately, ‘he hasn’t written to me since he left. Not once. Oh’ – at something which must have shown in my face – ‘I didn’t mind, really. I mean, we were never all that close, and if he didn’t want to, well, it was up to him, wasn’t it? You’re not to think I told all those lies to Mummy about him writing because I – because I felt he should have done, or something. I only did it so that I could get away.’

He finished the terrible little confession on a note of apology. I couldn’t look at him. It was all I could do not to state loudly and clearly just what I thought of his parents. ‘In other words,’ I said, ‘you’re running away?’

‘Yes. In a way. Yes.’

‘And now that you’re stuck with a nursemaid who looks like handing you over personally, you’ve had to tell her?’

‘It wasn’t that.’ He looked grateful for the calm neutrality of my tone. ‘I could have got away from you easily. It just didn’t seem fair, when you’d be the one to be left with all the row.’

‘I see. Thank you. Well, we’ll have to think this out, won’t we? How are you off for money?’

‘I’ve got about twenty pounds.’

‘If your father didn’t send you the money for the fare, where did you get it?’

‘Well, I suppose I stole it.’ said Timothy.

‘My poor Tim, you are breaking out, aren’t you? Who from?’

‘Oh, nobody. It was my Post Office account. I was supposed to leave it alone till my eighteenth birthday. That,’ said Timothy clearly, ‘is pretty soon, anyway.’

‘Am I to take it you didn’t intend to get in touch with your father at all? Did you only use the fact that he lives in Vienna as an excuse to get away?’

‘Not really. I’ve got to live somewhere till I get the job, and twenty pounds won’t last for ever. I expect there’ll be a bit of a turn-up, but you get over it.’

He spoke without noticeable apprehension, and I was reassured. Perhaps he was tougher than I had thought. It seemed as if he might need to be.

I said: ‘Well, we’ll go together to my hotel first, shall we, and have a wash and so forth, and ring your father up. I expect he’ll come for you . . . That is, if he’s
home. I suppose you don’t know if he’s in Vienna now? It’s August, after all; he may be away on holiday.’

‘That’s what the twenty pounds is for,’ said Timothy. ‘The – well, the interregnum.’

I got it then, with a bang. I turned to stare at him, and he, back in ambush behind the heavy lock of hair, eyed me once again warily, but this time – I thought – also with amusement.

‘Timothy Lacy! Are you trying to tell me you’ve lied to your poor mother and gone blinding off into the blue without having the foggiest idea where your father even
is
?’

‘Well, he does live in Vienna, I know he does. The money comes from there – the money to pay for school and so on.’

‘But you don’t actually know his address?’

‘No.’

There was a rather loaded silence. He must have misunderstood my half of it, for he said quickly: ‘Don’t think I’ll be a nuisance to you. If it’s too late to get hold of Daddy’s bank or something, I’ll just take a room at the hotel till Monday. You don’t need to bother about me at all. I’ll be fine, and there’s masses of things I want to do. When’s your husband joining you?’

‘I don’t quite know.’

‘You’ll be telephoning him tonight?’

Another pause. I took a breath to speak but I didn’t need to. The grey-green eyes widened. The lock of hair went back.

‘Vanessa March!’ It was a wickedly perfect imitation of the tone I had used to him, and it crumbled the last
barriers of status between us. ‘Are you trying to tell me that you’ve lied to my poor mother and gone off blinding into the blue without having the foggiest idea where your husband even
is
?’

I nodded. We met one another’s eyes. Unnoticed, the Caravelle touched down as smoothly as a gull. Outside the windows the flat fields of Schwechat streamed past, lights pricking out in the early dusk. The babel of foreign voices rose around us as people hunted for coats and hand-baggage.

Timothy pulled himself together. ‘The orphans of the storm.’ he said. ‘Never mind, Vanessa, I’ll look after you.’

In all the woes that curse our race
There is a lady in the case.

W. S. Gilbert:
Fallen Fairies

In the event, Timothy’s father proved very easy to locate. He was in the telephone book. It was Tim himself who discovered this, while I, sitting on my bed in the large, pleasant, and rather noisy room of the hotel Am Stephansplatz, was telephoning our first tentative enquiries down to the reception desk about banking hours in Vienna.

‘It must be him,’ said Timothy, pushing the directory page under my nose. ‘Look, there it is. Prinz Eugenstrasse 81. The telephone number’s 63 42 61.’