Finders Keepers (13 page)

Then she started on the next one.

The silence in the stable had worried him at first. He should really be saying stuff. Entertaining stuff. Stuff that would impress her.

But after a while he was relieved. The more he watched her, the more he realized how little he knew about anything that was happening: Em, the horse, the show –
anything
. If he’d spoken, it would only have been empty noise. So he just sat there and watched, with barely a word passing between them.

Everything she did was right. The horse knew it and, even in his ignorance, Steven could see it too. She was so deft and quietly confident that all the two of
them
could do to help was to let her get on with it and not get in the way. When she clicked at Skip and touched his chest, the pony stepped backwards obligingly to let her duck under his throat. She asked Steven to pass her a little wooden box so that she could stand on it to reach the mane more easily. He placed it as carefully as he could, trying to gauge exactly how close she’d like to be – then
was
pleased when she stepped on to it without adjustment.

He looked into Skip’s drowsy brown eye and felt they were on the same team.

Em saddled the horse with gleaming black leather that smelled of money, then led him on to the concrete yard to the pantomime echo of coconut shells.

She stripped off her mucky blue overalls to reveal dazzling white jodhpurs and sleeveless cotton shirt, like an angel appearing in a Sunday-school story.

‘Do you ride?’ she asked, and Steven shook his head dumbly. ‘Want a go?’

He wondered what the right response would be. He didn’t want to look scared, but he also didn’t want to fall off.

‘I’m scared I’ll fall off,’ he said, immediately stunned by his own stupidity.

But Em only nodded in understanding. ‘Yeah. Falling off is crap.’

She put on a flared jacket with a blue velvet collar and swung into the saddle. ‘You can ride home,’ she said. ‘Then if you fall off it won’t ruin the whole day.’

When he looked up in surprise, she was showing him her little white teeth.

‘Deal,’ he laughed.

The black gates clicked shut behind them and they meandered through the lanes, the air buzzing with summer and her polished boot nudging his arm. Em cooed to the horse and flicked flies off his twitching skin with her whip. Or she just left the silence to settle, reflective and clear, until one of them felt like throwing a little pebble of conversation into it. The ripples seemed effortless, and the closer they came to the show, the better Steven’s allergy got.

CHARLIE PEACH WAS USED
to sitting and waiting in the minibus. He didn’t mind it. In fact, he liked it. Charlie liked things just the way they were. He liked things not to change. When his dad put him to bed, he liked being in bed; when his dad got him up, he liked being up. So whenever he was in the minibus, he preferred not to get out.

He
would
get out, of course. Not like Robbie or Miranda. Always kicking and shouting and falling on the ground if they didn’t get their way.
Making a fuss
, Mrs Johnson called it.

But Charlie never made a fuss. When the time came to get out, he would sit still while Mrs Johnson or Mr King un buckled his harness, and let them help him from the minibus.

This minibus was new. It was much more comfy than the old one, which had ripped vinyl seats and smelled of toilets. Charlie would happily sit here all day – even though it was hot.

Robbie and Miranda had gone ahead because they always went first, so that just left him and Teddy and Beth. Teddy was the cleverest of all of them. He couldn’t speak right but
everyone
knew he was clever. He even wrote stuff using a proper computer.

‘Teddy?’ said Charlie, and the boy beside him jerked his head awkwardly and pointed his shiny, spit-covered chin at Charlie.

Cocking his head to keep eye-contact, Charlie sang:

One man went to MOW

Went to mow a medal

Charlie waited for Teddy to join in, but he didn’t, so he looked at Beth. He couldn’t tell whether she was looking back because her eyes were so squinty, but she said ‘Shut up, retard’ – so he just continued quietly by himself.

One man and his DOG

Went to mow a medal

Teddy Loosemore turned his head away and looked out through the windscreen at the rows of cars reflecting the high sun in the middle of the field. They were parked a little distance from the other cars – closer to the tents and the toilets. Beth always needed to be close to the toilets.

They were late. They were always late wherever they went in the minibus. Teddy hated it but he had no control over it. He tried to look at the watch his mother had bought him for his birthday, but couldn’t make his wrist turn the right way. He gripped it with his other hand and turned the watch face towards him. Almost 11am. The day was half over. The other kids didn’t care, but Teddy did. When he had a day out, he wanted it to start when it did for normal people. The others probably didn’t even know they were at a horse show.

In his head, Teddy sighed. In his mouth, it sounded like a weird grunt.

In a minute Mrs Johnson, whose name was Mary, and Mr King, whose name was Michael, would come back for him and
Beth
. The other two volunteers would stay with Robbie and Miranda. Teddy wished they would hurry up. It was hot and he wanted to see the horses. He was glad he was next off the bus. Charlie would be last, as usual, because he never made a fuss.

Poor Charlie.

Teddy knew what had happened to Charlie, although nobody had ever told him. Because he was twisted and couldn’t get his words out and was usually covered in drool, people talked about private things right in front of Teddy. So he knew that the umbilical cord had got stuck around Charlie’s neck when he was being born, and that was why he had the brain of a four-year-old, even though he was fourteen.

Teddy knew all kinds of things that people didn’t know he knew. He heard things and remembered them. He knew that Mrs Johnson’s daughter-in-law drank too much and then drove the children to school; he knew Mr King’s wife had left him for a man twice his size and with half his IQ. And he knew that Beth’s mother had been in prison for soliciting, although he was hazy on why being a solicitor was a crime.

Teddy also knew things he’d read in books and online – stories of heroes and inventors and soldiers and spacemen – and when he read those things he was
there
and he was free and whole, and he felt as if he were flying. In reality, he couldn’t even walk. At least Charlie had that. At least Charlie could propel himself about the planet on his own two feet. Go where he pleased – even upstairs – run across a field in his bare feet if he felt like it, however damaged he was in the head.

Teddy’s mother always told him how lucky he was. Lucky to be living in England instead of India, where he’d be begging in a gutter; lucky to have the internet when children in Africa didn’t even have books or electric lights to read them by. Lucky to be alive.

Teddy’s head jerked angrily. Sometimes it was hard to feel lucky.

Charlie sang quietly beside him. As usual. He only knew
three
songs. ‘One Man Went to Mow’, ‘Ten Green Bottles’ and ‘Waltzing Matilda’. He didn’t know all the right words and couldn’t count up past ten or back down at all, which made his song choices unfortunate. Sometimes Teddy imagined that baby cord squeezing Charlie’s tiny neck like a cruel python. What could Charlie have been without that cord? What songs might he have sung then? But it wasn’t all bad. That fouled cord may have squeezed most of the IQ clean out of Charlie’s head, but it had also squeezed out all the bad things – leaving only sunshine and smiles and a breathy, tuneful little-boy voice.

Teddy suddenly felt guilty for not singing along with Charlie.

‘They’re coming,’ said Beth, and Teddy saw Mr King and Mrs Johnson walking back to them across the lush meadow, both wearing dark glasses that made them look like spies. He thought how amazing it would be to be a spy, and then realized that he almost was one – the way he picked up information while nobody thought he knew what they were saying. In his head he
was
a spy.

In his head he could be anything.

It made him happy, and when Charlie counted down from four men to one man – via nine men – he suddenly joined him:

… and his dog, Spot! Bottle of pop!

Charlie giggled. Only Teddy knew that bit, although when he sang it, it sounded like ‘da, Spa! Oddey o pa!’

Went to mow a ME–DAL!

‘Warm enough for you, Charlie?’ Mr King took off his sunglasses and winked at Charlie, and Charlie laughed and nodded. Mr King smiled and ruffled the boy’s wispy yellow hair. ‘Be back for you in a mo, OK, big man?’

‘OK, Mr King.’ He loved it when Mr King called him big man.

Beth and Teddy got out – Teddy in his wheelchair on the lift that Charlie liked to ride on when everyone was in a good mood – and he said goodbye and watched them cross the grass towards the tents and the horses and the flags and the fun.

*

Jonas eyed the horses from the safety of the refreshment tent. Now and then a child would amble over with a pony in tow like a saddled dog, and fumble change out of her jodhpurs for an ice cream, but mostly the horses stayed on the other side of the blue nylon rope that divided the middle of the field into three square rings – two for showing and one for jumping.

It was years since he’d been to a horse show. Not since he was a boy. He couldn’t remember the name of the pony he’d borrowed from Springer Farm, but he remembered the sun beating down on his back, and the same smells of leather, hot grass and manure.

For some reason, they made him feel uneasy.

In a minute he’d have to make another circuit through the car park. The first two had been fraught with contact. Everyone wanted to say hello and shake his hand and ask how he was. Now Jonas was lingering over the dregs of his tea before venturing out into the open again.

The Exmoor foxhounds were in the showing ring. All tongues and tails, crowded around the huntsman with his red coat, white whip and gleaming britches. Children had been invited in to pet the big brown and white dogs, in a get-’em-early PR exercise for the hunt. There was even a boy in an electric wheelchair, flapping his crooked arms and looking at the sky, while a hound pissed on his wheel.

Now and then a hound would detach itself from the pack and lope across the ring after a scent. A sharp call of its name would bring it back in an instant. It had always amazed Jonas that the
huntsman
knew each of his forty or so dogs by name, when they all looked so similar.

‘Daisy!’

‘Dandy!’

‘Milo!’

And the errant dog would lope back to the pack and join the patchwork mayhem.

In the nearest ring a fat grey pony put in a dirty stop and launched a tiny child over a shin-high fence. The girl’s mother ducked under the nylon and hurried over. She stood the sobbing five-year-old on her feet, brushed her down, wiped her face and plonked her back on the grazing beast, with the usual instructions about heels and hands and showing him who was boss. The pigtailed tot sniffed, nodded fiercely and flapped her skinny peach legs up and down, before trotting a circle and performing a perfect action replay. The bell rang to say they’d been disqualified, and the judge in the caravan asked for a round of applause for a brave try. The mother picked up the pieces and left, leading the girl by one hand and the devious pony by the other – apparently far crosser with the former than the latter.

Astonishing, thought Jonas. People won’t let their kids cycle to school, but they’ll put them on half a ton of stupid muscle, then slap its arse to make it go faster.

Lucy would have loved this
.

The thought came from nowhere and made his throat ache.

He put his tea down with a clatter of spoon and saucer, and headed for the car park.

The sun was already very warm but Charlie didn’t mind. He turned his face towards it and closed his eyes and felt the lids heat up like little blankets.

There was a big voice from somewhere – like Mr King at sports day – saying things that Charlie couldn’t quite catch, drifting in and out with the breeze. Whenever the voice stopped it was as quiet as bedtime.

He almost dozed.

There was a sharp, crunchy sound and he opened his eyes.

At first he saw nothing. Then, squinting into the sun, he saw a man between the parked cars draw back his hand with a stick in it, and hit a car window. Charlie jumped at the sound of glass breaking.

‘Oh!’ said Charlie. ‘Oh!’

Bad man! He broke the window! Bad bad man! Nicola Park had broken a window in the school greenhouse and Mrs Johnson had been
sooooo
cross!

As Charlie watched, the man moved a few rows away, peering into cars. Then – first glancing left and right – he stopped and did the same thing again.