Crossfire (5 page)

Maybe I shouldn’t have come, but somehow I had needed to. This place was where I’d grown up, and in some odd way it still represented safety and security. And in spite of the shouting, the arguments and the fights, it was the only home I’d ever had.

I lay on the bed and looked up at the familiar ceiling with its decorative molding around the light fixture. It reminded me so much of the hours I had spent lying in exactly the same way as a spotty seventeen-year-old longing to be free, longing to join the army and escape from my adolescent prison. And yet here I was again, back in the same place, imprisoned again, this time by my disability but still longing to be in the army, determined to rejoin my regiment, hungry to be back in command of my troops and eager to be, once more, fighting and killing the enemy.

I sighed, stood up and looked at myself in the mirror on the wardrobe door. I looked normal, but looks could be deceptive.

I sat down on the edge of the bed and removed my prosthesis, rolling down the flesh-colored rubber sleeve that gripped over my real knee, keeping the false lower leg and foot from falling off. I slowly eased my stump out of the tight-fitting cup and removed the foam-plastic liner. It was all very clever. Molded to fit me exactly by the boys at Dorset Orthopedic, they had constructed a limb that I could walk on all day without causing so much as a pressure sore, let alone a blister.

But it still wasn’t
me.

I looked again at the mirror on the wardrobe door. Now my reflection didn’t appear so normal.

Over the past few months, I suppose I had become familiar with the sight of my right leg finishing so abruptly some seven inches below my knee. Familiar, it might have been, but I was far from comfortable with the state of affairs, and every time I caught a glimpse of myself in a mirror without my prosthesis, I was still shocked and repulsed by the image.

Why me? I thought for the millionth time.

I shook my head.

Feeling sorry for myself wasn’t going to help me get back to combat-ready fitness.

H
as Josephine Lost Her Magic?”

The front-page headline of Sunday’s
Racing Post
couldn’t have been more blunt. The paper lay on the kitchen table when I went downstairs at eight o’clock to make myself some coffee after a disturbed night.

I wondered if my mother or stepfather had been down to the kitchen yet, and if so, had they seen the headline? Perhaps I should hide it. I looked around for something to casually place over the paper, as I could hear my mother coming down the stairs, but it was too late anyway.

“That bastard Rambler,” she was shouting. “He knows sod all.”

She swept into the kitchen in a light-blue quilted dressing gown and white slippers. She snatched up the newspaper from the table and studied the front-page article intently.

“It says here that Pharmacist was distressed after the race.” My mother was shouting over her shoulder, obviously for the benefit of my stepfather, who had sensibly stayed upstairs. “That’s not bloody true. How would Rambler know anyway? He’d have been propping up a bar somewhere. Everyone knows he’s a drunk.”

I shifted on my feet, my false leg making its familiar metallic clink.

“Oh, hello,” said my mother, apparently seeing me for the first time. “Have you read this rubbish?” she demanded.

“No,” I said.

“Well, don’t,” she said, throwing the paper back down on the table. “It’s a load of crap.”

She turned on her heel and disappeared back upstairs as quickly as she had arrived, shouting obscenities and telling all the world how she would “have Rambler’s head on a platter for this.”

I leaned down and turned the paper around so I could read it.

“From our senior correspondent Gordon Rambler at Cheltenham” was printed under the headline. I read on:

Gordon Rambler had pulled no punches. He went on to speculate that Mrs. Kauri might be overtraining the horses at home, such that they had passed their peak by the time they reached the racetrack. It would not have been the first time a trainer had inadvertently “lost the race on the gallops,” as it was known, although I would be surprised if my mother had, not after so many years of experience. Not unless, as the paper said, she had lost her magic touch.

But she hadn’t lost her touch for shouting. I could hear her upstairs in full flow, although I couldn’t quite make out the words. No doubt my stepfather was suffering the wrath of her tongue. I almost felt sorry for him. But only almost.

 

 

I
decided it might be prudent for me to get out of the house for a while, so I went for a wander around the stables.

The block nearest the house, the one over which Ian Norland lived, was just one side of three quadrangles of stables, each containing twenty-four stalls, that stretched away from the house.

When my mother had acquired the place from her first husband there had been far fewer stables, laid out in two lines of wooden huts. But by the time my father had packed up and left nine years later, my mother had built the first of the current redbrick rectangles. The second was added when I’d been about fifteen, and the third more recently in what had once been a lunging paddock. And there was still enough of the paddock remaining to add a fourth, if required.

Even on a Sunday morning, the stables were a hive of activity. The horses needed to be fed and watered seven days a week, although my mother, along with most trainers, still resisted the temptation to treat Sunday as just another day to send strings of horses out on the gallops. But that was probably more to do with having to pay staff double time on Sundays rather than any wish to keep the Sabbath special.

“Good morning,” Ian Norland called to me as he came out of one of the stalls. “Still here, then?”

“Yes,” I said. Surely, I thought, I hadn’t implied anything to him the previous afternoon. “Why wouldn’t I still be here?”

“No reason,” he said, smiling. “Just . . .”

“Just what?” I asked with some determination.

“Just that Mrs. Kauri doesn’t seem to like guests staying overnight. Most go home after dinner.”

“This is my home,” I said.

“Oh,” he said. “I suppose it is.”

He seemed slightly flustered, as if he had already said too much to the son of his employer. He was right. He had.

“And how is Pharmacist this morning?” I asked, half hoping for some more indiscretion.

“Fine,” he said rather dismissively.

“How fine?” I persisted.

“He’s a bit tired after yesterday,” he said. “But otherwise, he’s OK.”

“No diarrhea?” I asked.

He gave me a look that I took to imply that he wished he hadn’t mentioned anything about diarrhea to me yesterday.

“No,” he said.

“Does he look well in his eyes?” I asked.

“Like I said, he’s just tired.” He picked up a bucket and began to fill it under a tap. “Sorry, I have to get on.” It was my cue that the conversation was over.

“Yes, of course,” I said. I started to walk on, but I stopped and turned around. “Which stall is Pharmacist in?”

“Mrs. Kauri wouldn’t want anyone seeing him,” Ian said. “Not just now.”

“Why on earth not?” I said, sounding aggrieved.

“She just wouldn’t,” he repeated. “Mrs. Kauri doesn’t like anyone snooping round the yard. Won’t even allow the owners to see their own horses without her there to escort them.”

“Nonsense,” I said in my best voice-of-command. “I’m not just anyone, you know. I’m her son.”

He wavered, and I thought he was about to tell me when he was saved by the arrival of his employer.

“Morning, Ian,” my mother called, striding around the corner towards us. She had swapped the light-blue dressing gown and white slippers for a full-length waxed Barbour coat and green Wellington boots.

“Ah, morning, ma’am,” Ian replied with some relief. “I was just talking to your son.”

“So I see,” she said in a disapproving tone. “Well, don’t. You’ve talked to him too much already.”

Ian blushed bright pink, and he stole a glance of displeasure at me.

“Sorry, ma’am,” he said.

She nodded firmly at him as if to close the matter. Ian’s rebuke may have been short, but I had the distinct impression that his indiscretion would be remembered for much longer. But for now she turned her attention to me. “And what are
you
doing out here, exactly?” she asked accusingly.

“I was just having a look round,” I said as innocently as I could.

I was thirty-two years old and still a serving captain in Her Majesty’s British Army. Until recently, I had been commanding a platoon of thirty men fighting and killing Her enemies with zest and gusto, but here I was feeling like a naughty ninth grader caught having a smoke behind the bike sheds by the school principal.

“Well, don’t,” she said to me in the same tone that she had used towards Ian.

“Why not?” I said belligerently. “Have you something to hide?”

Ian almost choked. It hadn’t been the most tactful of comments, and I could see the irritation level rise in my mother’s eyes. However, she managed to remain in control of her emotions. There were staff about.

One didn’t fight with family in front of staff.

“Of course not,” she said with a forced smile. “I just don’t want anyone upsetting the horses.”

I couldn’t actually see how wandering around the stable blocks would upset the horses, but I decided not to say so.

“And how is Pharmacist this morning?” I asked her.

“I was on my way to see him right now,” my mother replied, ignoring the implication in my voice. “Come on, Ian,” she said, and set off briskly with him in tow.

“Good,” I said, walking behind them. “I’ll come with you.”

My mother said nothing but simply increased her already break-neck pace, with Ian almost running behind her to keep up. Perhaps she thought that with my false foot, I wouldn’t be able to. Maybe she was right.

I followed as quickly as I could along the line of stalls and through the corridor into the next stable rectangle. If my mother thought she could go fast enough so that I wouldn’t see where she had gone, she was mistaken. I watched as she slid the bolts and went into a stall on the far side, almost pushing Ian through the gap and pulling the door shut behind them. As if that would make them unreachable. Even I knew that stable doors are bolted only from the outside. Perhaps I should lock them in and wait. Now, that would be fun.

Instead, I opened the top half of the door, leaned on the lower portion and looked in.

My mother was bent over, away from me, with her sizeable bottom facing the door. I did not take this as any particular gesture of disapproval, as she was simply running her hands down the backs of Pharmacist’s legs, feeling for heat that would imply a soreness of the tendon. Ian was holding the horse’s head-collar so that it couldn’t move.

“Nothing,” my mother said, standing up straight. “Not even a twinge.”

“That must be good,” I said.

“How would you know?” my mother said caustically.

“Surely it’s good if there’s no heat in his tendons,” I said.

“Not really,” she replied. “It means there must be another reason for him finishing so badly yesterday.”

That’s true, I thought.

“Does he look all right?” I asked.

“No, he’s got two heads.” My mother’s attempts at humor rarely came off. “Of course he looks all right.”

“Has he got diarrhea?” I asked.

Ian gave me a pained look.

“And why, pray, would he have diarrhea?” my mother asked haughtily, with strong accusation in her tone.

Ian stood quite still, looking at me. His jaw set as in stone.

“I just wondered,” I said, letting him off this particular hook. “I know horses can’t vomit, so I just wondered if he had a stomach upset that might show itself as diarrhea.”

“Nonsense,” my mother said. “Horses only get diarrhea with dirty or moldy feed, and we are very careful to keep our feed clean and fresh. Isn’t that right, Ian?”

“Oh yes, ma’am,” he said immediately.

I thought, perhaps unfairly, that Ian would have said “Yes, ma’am” to any request at that precise moment, even if she’d asked him to jump off the stable roof.

The inspection of Pharmacist was over, and my mother came out through the door followed by Ian, who slid home the door bolts.

Personally, if it had been my best horse that had inexplicably run so badly, I would have had a vet out here last night drawing blood and giving him the full once-over, testing his heart, his lungs and everything else, for that matter. Strangely, my mother seemed satisfied with a quick look and a cursory feel of his legs.

“How long before the dope-test results are out?” I said, somewhat unwisely.

“What dope test?” my mother asked sharply.

“The one that was ordered by the stewards.”