Meridon (Wideacre Trilogy 3) (13 page)

Mrs Greaves turned from the stove and wiped her hands on her working apron, her face inscrutable.

‘If Meridon comes in ill you take care of her, ma’am,’ he said to her. ‘Put her on the sofa in the parlour where you can keep an eye on her.’ She nodded. Dandy was frozen, a piece of bread half-way to her mouth.

‘Meridon to come into the parlour?’ Dandy demanded tactlessly.

A flicker of irritation crossed Robert’s face. ‘Why not?’ he said suddenly. ‘The only reason you two girls are housed in the stable yard is because I thought you would like your own little place, and it is easier for you to mind the horses. The two of you are welcome in the house, aye, and in the parlour too if you wish.’

I flushed scarlet at Dandy’s slip, and at Jack’s open-mouthed stare.

‘It doesn’t matter,’ I said flatly. ‘I’m well enough to work and I won’t need to rest. In any case, I’d not want to sit in the parlour.’

Robert pushed his chair back from the table and it scraped on the stone-flagged floor. ‘A lot of to-do about nothing,’ he said gruffly and went out of the kitchen. David got to his feet as well.

‘Half an hour’s rest,’ he said to the three of us. ‘I’d like to see this famous horse of yours, Meridon.’

I smiled at that and led all of them, Mrs Greaves as well, out to the stable yard to see my horse, my very own horse, in daylight.

He was lovely. In daylight, in a familiar stable yard, he was even lovelier than I had remembered him. His neck was arched high, as if there were Arab blood in him. His coat was a dark grey, shading to pewter on his hind legs. His mane and tail were the purest of white and silver, down his grey face there was a pale white blaze, just discernible. And four white socks on his long legs. He whickered when he heard my step and came out of the stable with just a halter on, as gently as if he had never thrown and rolled on a rider in his life. He threw up his head and sidled when he saw the others and I called:

‘Stand back, especially you Jack and David. He doesn’t like men!’

‘He’ll suit Meridon, then,’ said Dandy to Jack and he smiled and nodded.

Sea stood quiet enough then, and I held his head collar and smoothed his neck and whispered to him to be still, and not to be frightened, for no one would ever hurt him or shout at him again. I found I was whispering endearments, phrases of love, telling him how beautiful he was – quite the most beautiful horse in the world! And that he should be with me for ever and ever. That I had won him in Robert’s bet, but that in truth we had found each other and that we would never part again. Then I led him back down through the path at the side of the garden to the field and turned him out with the others to graze.

‘You’ll be wanting time off to train him,’ David said wryly, watching my rapt face as Sea stretched his long neck and trotted with proud long strides around the field.

‘Robert wanted me to work the other horses anyway,’ I said. ‘I was never to be your full-time pupil.’

David nodded. ‘And you’ve started your little savings fund,’ he said. ‘You’ll be a lady yet, Meridon.’

I was about to smile and turn off the remark when I suddenly remembered the gypsy at the street corner in Salisbury, just
before I saw Sea, just before the bet and the ride and the fall. She had said I would get my home, my gentry home. She said that my mother and her mother would lead me home, and that I would be more at home there than either of them. I would indeed be a lady, I would make my way into the Quality. David saw my suddenly absorbed expression and touched me on the shoulder. I did not flinch at his touch.

‘Penny for your thoughts,’ he said.

‘I’ll not rob you,’ I replied at once. ‘I was thinking nothing which was worth sharing.’

‘Then I’ll interrupt your thoughts with some work,’ he said briskly and raised his voice so that the other two could hear: ‘Come on you two! A race back to the barn to warm you up. One, two, three, and away!’

That day’s training was the pattern for the following days of that week, and for the week after. Every day we worked, running, exercising, heaving ourselves up on the bar, pushing ourselves up from the floor using just our hands. Every day we grew stronger, able to run further, to do more of the exercises. Every day we ached a little less. I had learned the knack of swinging on the practice trapeze: I could build the swing higher and higher until it felt like flying. As the swing grew the swooping frightened feeling inside me grew, but I learned to almost enjoy that sudden down-rush with the air in my face and my muscles working to keep the swing moving, to build the speed and the momentum. Every day, though for some days I truly did not notice, David had raised the rigging on the trapeze so that it hung higher and higher from the floor until the only way to mount it was to go up the ladder at the side of the barn and swoop down with it.

Then one day, in the third week, while Dandy and Jack were practising swinging on the high trapeze in the roof of the barn, David called me off the practice trapeze.

I dropped to the ground and waited. I was scarcely out of breath at all now.

‘I want you to try going up the ladder today,’ he said gently. ‘Not to swing if you don’t want to, Meridon. I promised you I’d
never force you, and I mean it. But for you to see if you have your nerve for heights now you are so confident on the practice trapeze. Besides, when you hang straight from the flying trapeze you are about the height from the catch-net as you are now from the floor. It’s just as safe, Meridon. There’s nothing to fear.’

I looked from his persuasive blue eyes up to the pedestal rigged at the roof of the barn, and at Dandy’s casual confident swing on the trapeze. She and Jack were practising doing tricks into the net. As I watched, uncertain if I could face the ladder up to the rocking pedestal, Dandy launched herself off the pedestal on the trapeze and flung herself off it in a ball. She somersaulted once and fell into the net on to her back, and bounced up smiling.

‘I’ll try,’ I said drawing a deep breath. ‘I’ll go up there at least.’

‘Good girl,’ David said warmly. He patted my back and called to Dandy. ‘Go up the ladder behind your sister. She’s going to see the view from the top.’ To Jack he snapped his fingers. ‘You come down,’ he said. ‘No point having all of you up there.’

I knew how to climb the ladder – heel to toe, heel to toe – and I knew to push up with my legs, not to try to haul myself up with my arms. The rope ladder trembled as I went up and I bit my tongue on a little gasp of fear.

I was afraid of stepping from the ladder to the pedestal board. It was such a tiny bit of wood with two raised poles to hold on to. It was only as wide as half my foot, and my bare toes curled over the edge as if I would grip like a dancing monkey on a stick. I clenched my hands around the poles on each side of the board, and saw my knuckles go white. I was bow-legged with fear and trying to balance. My stomach churned and I longed to piss in fright. There was nothing I could hold which was firm, which felt safe. I gave a little sob.

Dandy, coming up behind me on the ladder, heard me.

‘Want to come down?’ she asked. ‘I’ll guide you down.’

I was crouched on the pedestal now, shifted slightly to the right, both hands gripping the left-side pole. I looked at the jigging ladder where Dandy waited and feared it as much as the trapeze.

‘I’m afraid,’ I said. Fear had tightened my throat and I could hardly speak. My stomach pulsed with terror, my knees were bent like an old dame with rheumatism. I could not straighten up.

‘Is it bad?’ David called up from down below. I did not dare nod for fear that would shake the pedestal board. Dandy waited on the ladder.

‘Do you want to climb down?’ David called.

I opened my mouth to tell him that I did not dare climb. That I did not dare swing. I had lost my voice. All I could do was croak like a fear-struck frog.

‘Get out of it,’ Dandy said, careless of my deep terror. ‘Grab hold of the trapeze and swing down and drop into the net, Meridon. It’s the quickest way. Then you’ll never have to come up again.’

I could not turn my head to look for her. I was clamped rigid by my fear. With one lithe movement she was up beside me on the pedestal and had unhooked the trapeze. She drew it towards me and took my arm and wrested it from its grip on the upright pole. I grabbed at the trapeze bar as if it might save me. It pulled me a little near the edge with its weight and I gasped a little in fright. It was dragging me off. I had not known that it would pull me so. I was midway between falling and clinging on. I did not have the strength to pull back, and my fist was clenched so tight I was not able to drop the trapeze and let it swing away.

With one swift, callous movement Dandy reached behind my back and snatched my left hand from the supporting pole. At once the weight of the trapeze dragged me forward and off the pedestal board into the void of space. In panic I grabbed at the trapeze with my free hand as a drowning man grabs at a twig in his despair. I clutched it and cried for help as I swooped down the lurching black valley of the swing in a blank haze of screaming terror.

It was like falling in dreams, in those dreadful nightmares when you seem to fall and fall for ever and the terror of them is so bad that you wake screaming. I swooped downwards clinging
to the trapeze and then felt the drag as it swung up the hill of the other side of the swing. Then I was falling backwards, which was even worse, swinging back towards the pedestal and I was yelling in terror that I was going to hit the pedestal and knock Dandy off it.

‘It’s all right!’ I heard her call from close behind me. ‘Just swing, Merry! Like you do on the practice trapeze.’

The brown of the tarry string of the catch net leapt into vision as I swung down towards it again and then it fell away from me as I crested the swing. I hung like a brace of pheasants in a larder. But inside my limp hopeless body I was weeping with terror.

Three more times the swing rocked backwards and forwards with me a white doll tossed about underneath it. Then it slowed and slowed and finally stopped and I hung still above the catch-net.

‘Drop down,’ David called. ‘You’re safe now, Meridon. Drop down into the net. Keep your legs up as you drop and you’ll land softly on your back. Just let go the bar, Meridon.’

I was frozen. My hands were locked tight on the bar. I looked down and there between my feet was the catch-net and, beneath it, the gleaming white of the wood shavings. Safety, solid ground. I willed myself to let the bar go.

It was no use. It was as if I had forgotten the skill to open my hands, to release my fingers. I was clenching the bar as if it were the only thing which would save me from tumbling head first into a precipice.

‘Let go!’ David called, his voice more urgent. ‘Meridon! Listen to me! Just let go the bar and we’ll have you down!’

I looked towards him and he saw the mute terror in my face. He went over to the A-frame where the catcher straddles, ready to swing the flyer forwards and back up to the trapeze. He climbed up Jack’s ladder swiftly until he was parallel with me, his face on a level with my own. But too distant to reach me.

‘Come on, girl,’ he said, his voice soft and warmed with his Welsh accent. ‘Just let your hands go and you’ll drop gently in the net and we can all go and have a rest. You’ve worked hard this morning, you’ll be ready for your dinner.’

I could feel the tears coming into my eyes and then running down my cheeks but I did not cry out. His voice was warmer.

‘Come on, Merry,’ he said sweetly. ‘Just lift your legs up a little and lie back and you’ll be down as snug as if you were laid in bed. You’ve seen Dandy do it a hundred times. Just lift your legs a little and let go.’

I opened my mouth to speak, but still no voice came. I took a deep breath and my overstrained back muscles shuddered. I gripped tighter with my fingers in fear of falling.

‘I…can’t,’ I said.

‘Course you can,’ David said instantly. ‘There’s not the least difficulty in the world, little Merry. Lift your legs up towards me and shut your eyes and think of nothing. You’ll be down in a second.’

I obeyed him, as I could, as well as I could. I did as I was bid. I lifted my legs so that when I dropped I would fall backwards into the catch net. I shut my eyes. I took a deep breath.

It was no good. My fingers were locked as if they were the latches on a door. I could not will them to open. I was clinging, like a baby monkey to its mother’s back, in pure instinctive terror. I could not let go.

I did not let go.

Minutes I hung there while David talked to me gently, ordered me, begged me. Minutes while Dandy climbed up the ladder in his place and smiled at me and asked me to let go and come down to her. Her smile was strained, I could see the fright in her eyes and, despite myself, my grip tightened.

The tears poured down my cheeks, I was torn between my longing for this nightmare to be over and to be on safe ground again, and my absolute blank and helpless terror which had locked my grip so that I could not let go.

‘Meridon, please!’ Jack said from ground level. ‘You’re so brave, Meridon! Please do as David says!’

My clenched muscles around my chin and throat struggled to open. ‘I…can’t,’ I said.

David climbed up the catcher’s frame again. ‘Meridon,’ he said softly. ‘Your grip is going to go soon and you will fall. You can’t stop that. As you feel yourself going I want you to lift your legs so that your weight goes backwards. Then you will land on your back. If you fall straight down you will hurt yourself a little. I want you to land soft. When you feel your grip slipping get your legs up.’

I heard him. But I was far beyond obeying him. All I could feel was the singing continuous pain in my back and my shoulders and my arms and my chest. My bones felt as if they were being dragged from the sockets. My hands were like claws. But I could not tighten their grip. And though I was squeezing them harder and harder I could feel them begin to loosen and slip.

‘No!’ I wailed.

‘Legs up!’ yelled David. But I could not hear him in my panic. My fingernails clawed at the bar, my hands grasped at air. I fell like a dagger into the ground, feet first, into the catch net.