Annan Water (11 page)

Leading him towards the Annan Water.

T
HE VAN WAS WAITING
in the yard. Jimmy got out and helped Jean out of the lorry.

‘Are you all right?’

‘I’m fine,’ she said. ‘Just a little fracture. We weren’t expecting you until tomorrow.’

Jimmy looked acutely unhappy. ‘It didn’t take as long as we expected. Ruth is going to need to talk to Annie.’

Michael went with her to gather her things.

‘Ring me,’ he said. ‘Come tomorrow if you can.’

She nodded, but he could see that she was distressed.

‘
Ruth is going to need to talk to Annie
,’ she said. ‘What do you think that means?’

‘I don’t know.’

‘I do.’

‘What?’

She took the flimsy carrier from his hand. ‘If we’re going to get our act together it had better be soon.’

She was gone, out across the wet and whickering yard and into the van. Michael stood in the kitchen, listening to the engine fading out along the road.

In the sitting room, Jean said, ‘Damn!’

‘What is it?’ he asked.

‘Oh, it’s nothing,’ said Jean, but there was a catch in her throat; she was close to the end of her endurance. ‘It’s just that the fire’s gone out.’

In the sodden, squelching darkness he carried a bale of hay down to the horses in the field. They crowded around him, snatching wisps from the bale. He broke it, tossed the fragrant flakes in different directions, and they split off in pursuit.

He shone the torch on them, one at a time. Bandit’s rug had slipped. Michael straightened it, then leaned for a while against the cob’s flat withers, watching him tear at the hay.

‘You like Annie, don’t you?’ he said to him quietly. ‘So do I.’

With Frank away and Jean done up, Michael had everyone’s work to do that night. All the injections to be given, the haynets to fill, the water buckets sloshing into his wellies. After that there were feeds to be measured and mixed, beet pulp to be soaked, dogs to be found and fed.

Jean, long practised in the art, had made a one-handed meal of scrambled eggs on toast. Michael swallowed it down, even though there seemed to be nowhere for it to go. His whole body felt as if it was full of some toxic, leaden compound that slowed down his movements and made him feel cold. He filled a hot-water bottle for Jean, then took himself up to bed.

But his room was still stinking with fumes. The streaky, half-painted walls disturbed his brain patterns. The floor was a litter of newspapers, paint tins, jars of black and white turps. He went into Annie’s room instead and got into the bed. The sheets still held a faint trace of her sweetness.

I loathe that she should wet her feet

Because I love her more than any.

What had she meant? What was her mother going to talk to her about?

The sides are steep, the water’s deep,

From bank to brae the water’s pouring …

‘If we’re going to get our act together …’

What did she mean by that? Was she really going to leave home? And if she did, was he really going to go with her?

In the early hours of the morning he woke to the sound of a car pulling into the yard. For a few moments of wild joy he held his breath, certain that it was Jimmy, bringing Annie back to him. But it was Frank’s tread in the yard, Frank’s key in the lock, Frank’s quiet voice calming down the excited dogs.

F
RANK HIT THE ROOF
when he saw the state of Michael’s room. His indignation boomed throughout the house.

‘What is this place? A madhouse?’

Jean must have answered. Michael couldn’t hear her.

‘But he’s painting pedestrian crossings on his walls!’

Jean answered again. Michael heard her voice but not her words. She was still in her bedroom across the hall; maybe still in bed.

‘I know, I know,’ Frank said impatiently. And then, more acquiescently, ‘I know.’

It was broad daylight. The traffic noise was already loud and persistent. There would be no roadwork again that day.

There was no show either. It would have been a great day to give Annie a lesson. Michael thought of phoning her, but she still hadn’t given him her number. He didn’t even know what her surname was. That was crazy.

They’d barely finished breakfast when the girl who was interested in the grey mare turned up, unannounced, with her father. It was a canny trick, designed to stop sellers ‘preparing’ a horse for a prospective customer; doping a lame one, perhaps, or riding a dangerous one into the ground.

‘Sit down and have a cup of tea,’ said Jean.

They did, but it was clear that they were uneasy in the cold, lean kitchen.

Michael wished he’d had warning. He would at least have moved the pony into one of the new stables. It cheapened her somehow, to be seen in a narrow cattle stall, no matter what explanations he might give. What was worse, he hadn’t mucked her out for two days. Her hocks and knees were covered in yellow-brown stains.

But the rest of her coat was clean beneath her rug when he pulled it off her in the yard.

‘Sound in every way,’ said Frank. ‘Open to any vet you like.’

The man nodded and circled the pony. There was no way he could fault her conformation. She had none of the narrowness that sometimes spoiled pony breeds as they grew closer to the thoroughbred look that show judges tended to favour. She was a round-barrelled, powerful little tank of a pony. She was a bonny grey mare.

Michael let the girl brush her over, pick out her feet, tack her up. He put the studs in himself, though, to be sure they were tight. They couldn’t afford any more mistakes.

He rode her first; put her through her paces in his usual professional way. When he was satisfied that she was as settled as she was likely to get, he jumped down and gave the girl a leg-up. Of all the riders who had sat up on that pony, the girl got on with her the best. She was the right kind of rider for her: light-handed and fearless. Even when the mare fizzed and fretted, the girl didn’t panic, but relaxed; wound her down; did all the right things.

Her father and Frank were leaning against the paddock rail. Michael heard nothing of their conversation until the girl had done as much as she wanted and they returned to the gate.

‘I tell you,’ Frank was saying, ‘if you’re still fixed on this trial business you’re wasting my time as well as your own.’

There was an awkward silence, during which it became clear that the man was, indeed, still set on the trial.

Frank sighed. ‘Listen,’ he said. ‘Do me a favour, will you?’

Michael stiffened. Frank often followed that question with dreadful, insulting suggestions. But this time he was being constructive.

‘Have a look at our chestnut pony. Have a go on him. If you don’t like him, you don’t like him. If you do, you can take him away for a week. Take him to a show. Take him to the pony club. Take him up Mount Everest if you like. But this lady isn’t leaving my yard till I have cash in my hand.’

The girl rode back to the yard. As Michael untacked the mare and put her rug back on, she said, ‘She’s beautiful. You must be mad about her.’

For an instant, Michael thought she was talking about Annie. Then he realized. ‘I am,’ he said automatically. But he found himself looking at the pony again, through Annie’s fresh, appreciative eyes.

‘I really am,’ he said, and meant it. ‘I’ll miss her when she goes.’

The chestnut was younger and a lot less experienced than the grey, but much steadier. He too responded well to the girl’s sympathetic style. She took her time to get him balanced, then jumped him round a small course.

‘You don’t have to start at the top, you know,’ Frank said to her father. ‘There’s a lot to be said for bringing a good pony up through the grades.’

Then, to Michael’s surprise, he went into the paddock and put up an enormous spread. It was bigger than anything the pony had faced before.

‘Away you go.’

It was a gamble. The pony would have been justified in refusing. But he spotted the fence early, sorted himself out well and sailed over it. As he returned to the watchers at the gate, there was a spark of pride in his brown eye.

The girl was thrilled to bits; a huge, beaming grin in a riding hat. She patted the pony over and over again.

Frank could judge them, all right. Not just ponies either, but people as well.

They delivered the chestnut straight away. The girl went with them in the lorry to show them the way. The smile never once left her face.

Her father had gone on ahead and prepared their smart wooden loosebox for the visitor. The pony rolled in the deep straw, making himself at home. As they walked away and left him, Michael came to a realization, but it wasn’t until he was back in the horsebox heading home that the full significance of it dawned upon him.

He always had a handful of ponies in his string: two or three on the show circuit, another couple of young or green ones coming on behind. But if this one, as seemed likely, didn’t come back to them, he would be left with only one.

Frank and Jean weren’t buying him any more ponies. The grey mare was the last one. When she was gone, there would only be horses. He would be an adult rider, making his way in the adult world.

‘D
ID ANYONE PHONE?’ SAID
Michael.

Jean shook her head. She was going through the paper stack again, more thoroughly this time. There was a litter of old magazines and screwed-up letters on the floor beside her.

Michael gathered them up and dumped them in the sitting room, beside the sooty sticks. The fire was unlit, but the room still smelled of woodsmoke. He wished he had a mobile. He’d been given one for his birthday the previous year, but it had fallen out of his pocket into a bucket of water a few days later. He ought to have got one on Thursday. He ought to have got one for Annie as well. He had the money.

Next time. Soon.

A dreadful anxiety gnawed at him perpetually. Several times during the day he thought about going to see her. He dreamed of turning up at Jimmy’s house with Bandit and asking him to fetch her; of cycling down and going across in the boat; of asking Frank to take him in the car, the long way, over the bridge.

But the day got swallowed up by horses, as every day before it and, foreseeably, every day beyond it. There was even more riding for him, now that Jean was grounded. There was even talk of him riding The Menace in the Open the next day, but he didn’t get on well enough with him in the field. His stride was too long and Michael couldn’t judge it. He was having to stand off his fences, or fiddle his way out of the bottom of them. At home it didn’t matter. Faced with a big track, it could be disastrous.

It started a major row. Frank had been warned off riding six years before, after a lunatic part-Arab had reared up and fallen over backwards on top of him, breaking his pelvis and three vertebrae, and rupturing his spleen. He didn’t count the roadwork as riding, even though he’d been dragged off by a following horse on more than one occasion. The last time Jean was laid up, he had threatened to take over her string, and had brought her to tears. He did exactly the same thing this time.

‘There’s no point in going to the flaming show if we can’t take the decent horses.’

‘Don’t go, then!’ said Jean. ‘What does one show matter?’

‘It won’t be one show, though, will it? How long are you going to have your hand tied round your neck?’

The last time it happened, Joanne had screamed at him, ‘Leave her alone! She can’t help it!’

Perhaps Frank remembered. Perhaps he just collared his temper, as he always did, sooner or later. Either way, the wind went out of his sails. He shook his head, as if wondering where he was, then walked around behind Jean’s chair and kissed the top of her head.

The people who were supposed to come and look at the skewbald mare didn’t turn up. No one was surprised. It happened all the time. None of them made allowances for punters; they never sat around and waited for them to arrive, but carried on with whatever they were doing and trusted that if anyone came they would track them down.

Someone did come to look at Bandit, though. A couple. They rang first, then arrived half an hour later. They looked, as a lot of visitors did, like a pair of new Volvos that had taken a wrong turn and found themselves in a breaker’s yard.

Michael brought Bandit up from the field and took off his rug. The couple looked at him. He looked at them. There was clearly no enthusiasm on either side.

‘We were looking for something,’ the woman said, ‘with a bit less bone.’

It was a polite way of saying that Bandit was an elephant. Michael wished they could have seen him out hunting; clever as a cat over the banks and ditches, using his head as well as his heart. There wasn’t a smarter horse, or a more obliging one, in the yard. He might have told them so; offered them a day’s hunting on him, if he hadn’t been Annie’s horse.

Frank showed them Horrocks, the skewbald mare, Oliver and the young Irish lad. They found fault with everything. The truth was that it wasn’t the horses that they didn’t like. It was dealers.

After the row about the show, Michael assumed they wouldn’t be going. He coaxed himself to sleep that night with the promise that he would see Annie the next day, one way or another. He woke with the prospect still glowing, but in seconds it was extinguished.

It was 6.30. Frank was knocking on the door.

‘Get up! Big day today!’

She rang, though, while they were away. Jean told him as soon as he came in.

‘What did she say?’

‘Nothing. Just to tell you she phoned.’

‘Did you get her number?’

‘No.’

‘Why not? Why not? You should have asked her for her number!’

‘How was I to know?’ said Jean. But she was laughing at him, and so was Frank.

Michael wanted to be angry, but he didn’t make it. She’d phoned. She still loved him. He no longer knew what he had been so worried about. Everything was sure to be all right.

S
HE WASN’T ONLY IN
his mind at school the following day. His whole skin was full of her. She inhabited his flesh. He felt her rings and studs in his face, her scars on his forearms, the lightness and grace of her feminine limbs. Her expressions, her gestures emanated from him. He was her, staring in surprise at Mr Burns.