The Grave Maurice (20 page)

He waited for Momaday to leave the barn and go about whatever his business was. Melrose was eager to saddle up his horse and walk it around. He realized he was giving Aggrieved short shrift, a horse that the trainer Davison had said could beat “anything on any track—slow or fast, turf, muddy, dry.” “Determined” is what Davison had called Aggrieved. “Determined.”

The horse was chomping away, his nose near the hay net. Melrose wondered about all the other stuff, the succulents and barley and so forth. He wondered how they were to be fed. He picked a nice apple from a bucket and tentatively held it. He was still trying to remember about looking at a horse straight on. He moved to the horse's side and held the apple out, nearly under Aggrieved's nose. The horse muzzled it up and chomped. Really, he was so easy-going in the benign setting of this stable that it was hard to picture him in the competitive world of racing.

Melrose looked about to see if Momaday was lurking, then took out his book
Riding for Beginners.
The “beginner” didn't bother him; it was the cartoon figure of a very young girl, in jodhpurs and riding jacket, with her sappy smile, who was to put him through his paces. My Lord, were there no
adult
beginners? Did all beginning occur around age seven? By the time this child got to be his age she'd have won the Olympic Gold for dressage twice over. Her name was Cindy Lou. She was from Kentucky (naturally). But he supposed riding was the same, here or in the States.

Cindy Lou showed him how to get the bit in a horse's mouth, and having done that successfully, Melrose led Aggrieved out of his stall so that he could saddle up. Ah, he liked the ring of it! “Saddle up.” It put him in mind of old American Westerns, which he had, actually, never seen. But one still knew the drill and the climate and the tone. Of course, he
had
seen
High Noon,
but that was much more than just a Western. As he was fastening the strap beneath the horse to secure the saddle, he replaced the image of Cindy Lou with Gary Cooper. He would like to adopt Gary Cooper's elegant insouciance, his shy forbearance, to wit, his persona. That, of course, could only come with practice.

Melrose looked outside again to make certain no one was about, that Ruthven, for instance, wouldn't come rushing up with a pot of tea and a carrot. Then he positioned a large wooden box by the horse's side. Left foot in stirrup; hoist and swing right leg over. Those were the instructions from wall-eyed Cindy Lou, who, he was sure, could get to be a pain. Okay, he was ready: one two three
hoist
and there he was sitting in the saddle! Actually up on one of the country's premier racehorses and
sitting
! Oh why hadn't they all been here to see this smooth-as-silk move?

Melrose shook the reins a little and they were out of the barn and walking through the grounds, which were extensive. Next, through the woods, by way of the public footpath. Aggrieved walked and Melrose swayed. The horse, he thought, was taking in the sun-dappled scenery, for his head moved up, down and around.

A narrow road ran between Ardry End and Watermeadows, a vast Italianate estate, gorgeously decayed, where lived the charming Flora Fludd. He would have a good reason to wind up over there at Watermeadows, now he could ride. Melrose gently pulled back on the reins, amazed again that the horse responded to his fingers. He considered a canter along this narrow road. He thumbed the book to see what the annoying Cindy Lou had to say. She warned against such a move, her palm held flat out like a white mollusk. It would be undertaking too much too soon. She advised at most a short trot and reminded him that one must fix one's seat in the saddle and rise, fall, rise, fall to the rhythm of the horse.

Melrose tried to do all of this as Aggrieved trotted along, sure he was going up when he should be going down. Finally, he thought he had the hang of it. They trotted on for some twenty minutes and came to the main Northampton Road, which he had no intention of riding on, then turned back toward the house and the stable, outside of which he meant to slide off the horse's back smooth as silk, but in pulling his left foot from the stirrup, caught it and fell to the ground.

Hell's bells!
There they all were, watching, especially Momaday. Ruthven walked toward him.

“You're all right, m'lord?” he asked as Melrose righted himself.

“Oh, yes, just not one of my best moves.”

“Lady Ardry is here, in a state of high dudgeon, it appears. She insists on seeing you immediately.”

“Ruthven, why is it different from any other time? She always insists. Oh, very well.” He handed the horse over to Momaday.

Ruthven always enjoyed Agatha being in a “state,” not only because he liked seeing her upset but because it kept her from carping about the offerings on the tea table, one of which she was stuffing in just as Melrose walked into the drawing room.

Around a mouthful of scone, she accused him of something or other, but what it was, Melrose couldn't make out except the tag end:

“. . . to have done it!”

“Done what, Agatha?” He was engaged in thanking whatever gods that happened to be hanging about Ardry End that she hadn't witnessed his fall from the horse.

She was glaring as if from every corner of the room as she buttered up another scone. He poured himself a lovely cup of Darjeeling, plunked in a sugar cube and a dollop of milk, selected a moist-looking piece of cake and sat down, wishing that Aggrieved was here, hay and all, to be taking tea with him instead of Agatha. Perhaps the Sidbury Feed Store could construct a scone net, which could be hung from the Georgian ceiling molding.

He asked her again. “Done what?”

“Oh, you needn't play the innocent with me, Plant. It's all over the paper!”

Melrose frowned. How on earth could the Sidbury paper have gotten news of his acquisition of a racehorse? More important, why would the paper think it news at all? This rag Diane Demorney wrote for would now, in January, just be catching up with the flower show. But here was Agatha opening it, turning it for Melrose to see and tapping the offending piece with her finger.

Melrose left his chair to lean over and see it. Of course, it had nothing to do with Cambridge, how could it? The newspaper was interested only in what went on in its own backyard. He plucked it from Agatha's hands and read:

HUNT SUPPORTERS FOIL ANIMAL-RIGHTS GROUP

 

 

There on the front page was a picture of himself, Diane and Trueblood, in one of their careless moments (he would have said), but then all of their moments were pretty careless. They gave the impression they were attacking (or counterattacking) some of the animal protesters, when the three were about as aware of animal-welfare issues as the annual rainfall in Papua New Guinea. True, Melrose would never kick a cat (though he wouldn't answer for Diane if it got between her and the martini pitcher), but insofar as the whole movement was concerned they were totally uninformed. Yet here they were, in that moment when Melrose had quickly put out his arm to support a young woman with a sign who just then had caught her foot and was falling toward him; and Diane, raising her stiletto heel to shake out a stone; and Trueblood holding his camera above his head to keep it out of harm's way.

What a wonderful photo op! He must send a crate of succulents round to the Sidbury photographer. What an image for misconstruction!

“It makes me out to look the proper fool, Plant! You're aware of that, aren't you?”

Oh, indeed, he was aware. He kept a straight face as he sat down and sipped his cooling tea. Here was a moment to relish! Should he try to work out
how
this made Agatha out to be a fool—not that
that
was ever too difficult—or just play it?

Play it. “The point is, Agatha, if you must take up a cause, you also must be aware that there'll be a backlash from the anti-cause (was that a word?).”

“Oh, don't be ridiculous, Melrose.”

“Okay.” Melrose was eyeing the ruins of the tiered plate, looking for a pastry that had escaped Agatha's ravaging. She had a way of biting off and putting back when she was especially irritated, taking it all out on the scones and seedcake. He did find an Eccles cake without tooth marks.

“I've always thought it shameful,
shameful,
the way you neglect Mindy, here!”

Mindy-here was flopped on the hearth in her usual position, soaking up heat.

“How do you work that out, Agatha?”

“She gets
no exercise
! Do I ever see you out with that dog on a lead?”

“No, but that's only because you're over here having tea during dog-leading time.”

Agatha, he saw, was actually waving that half-buttered scone around instead of eating it. She must really be on the boil! He said, “I can't help but think we strayed from the subject, since I really don't believe the animal-liberation people are trying to get us to walk Siberian tigers.”

“You know nothing about it!” Realizing she had a scone in her hand that could as easily be in her mouth, she put it in and munched. Then having resurrected her weak argument, she said, “You surely must see the idiocy if not the inhumanity of a pack of hounds running down a poor little fox!”

“Yes, it
is
idiotic. Oscar Wilde said so and I agree. But that particular idiocy is a wholly different argument and not the one you're trying to make. As far as I'm concerned the entire hunting issue is a smoke screen for a class war.” He didn't know if he believed that or not, but it was as good an argument as any. “Why choose a thing that is
least
abusive—certainly ‘least' in terms of numbers—to make an issue of? If the welfare of animals was really at the heart of yesterday's masquerade, then why not spend one's time and energy on ridding the earth of far more brutal practices—slaughtering seals, mowing down wolves and deer from a helicopter, obliterating animal habitat, tracking and shooting the Siberian tiger in order to grind its bones for medicinal purposes”—which had for Melrose a terrible mythic ring to it—“so what it really comes down to isn't the welfare of the fox, but of the pink- and black- and tweed-coated citizens of the upper classes whom we would like to unseat.”

Agatha's attention, hard to keep in the best of circumstances, had strayed and was riveted on the long window off to her left. “A
horse
just passed that window!”

“Momaday's walking it.”

Hopeless.

T
he Sidbury paper was open on the table in the Jack and Hammer, the table's four occupants having a good old laugh.

“How
droll,
” said Diane Demorney, in her Noel Coward mood, her cigarette dripping ash over the paper and coming dangerously close to the martini glass. Diane was dressed in conventional and nondroll black, one by that Asian designer she'd been favoring lately (Issy? Icky? Mickey?) “We three mistaken for animal activists. They've obviously never come up against my cat. All I was doing”—she tapped the picture with her cigarette holder—“was shaking a stone from my shoe.”

“What'll we do for an encore?” said Trueblood.

“Wear mink and walk down Oxford Street,” said Vivian. “I wish I'd been there.”

“We did invite you, old girl,” said Trueblood. “We should join the hunt. Must be someplace we could rent a horse.”

“Look no farther than my back garden. I have a horse stabled there.”

He might as well have said he had a 747 hangered there, for the looks he got. He smiled.

“What on earth for? You don't
ride,
do you?” said the scandalized Trueblood.

“How
amusing
.” Coming from Diane, this was high praise indeed.

“My riding isn't all that good, but I plan on racing it. It's a Thoroughbred.” Melrose felt quite smug.

Diane said, “Remember Whirlaway? That is, remember reading about him, it being long before our time? Whirlaway was owned by Calumet Farm, that racing empire that was ruined by greed and mismanagement.”

Another Diane nugget.

“I can sympathize with greed, but why anyone would want to engage in a thing that needs management, I can't imagine.” She seemed to be brooding over her drink.

Vivian asked, “But where are you going to race him, Melrose?”

“Well . . .” He should have given this more thought. Newmarket? That was in Cambridgeshire. “Newmarket, possibly. I'm going to have to get advice from the Ryder trainer.”

“You know, Melrose,” Diane said, screwing another cigarette into her black holder, “you could have a nice little horse enterprise yourself with all of that land of yours.”

“I could plant cotton, too, but I'm not going to.”

“Don't be a stick. Imagine what fun it would be for all of us. You've enough land there for an honest-to-God racecourse.”

“And put up stands and have a few turf accountants around and a full bar?”

“Certainly, a bar. The rest is optional.”

“Diane,” said Vivian, “if I didn't know you better, I'd think you were serious.”

“Of course I'm serious.” She returned her look to Melrose.
“Or—”

“ ‘Or'?”

“Is—what'd you say your horse's name is?”

“Aggrieved.”

“You can rename it. Thunderbolt—there's a good name.”

“Why on earth would I do that? Aggrieved is a high-stakes winner.”

She waggled her cigarette holder at him. “For heaven's sake, Melrose, you don't want people knowing that; you don't want to give the whole bloody thing away. The idea is to get odds of say fifty to one and make a packet of money.”