The Horse Dancer (41 page)

‘I can’t go, Mac. I’m in the middle of a case.’

‘Tash, Sarah is
missing
.’

‘I’m well aware of that, but she’s done this before. And I can’t just drop everything every time she decides to take off for a few hours.’

‘I gotta tell you, I don’t think she’s aimin’ to come back any time soon.’ Cowboy John removed his hat and scratched the top of his head.

‘I can’t leave this case.’ She gestured down the corridor at the thin blonde woman, who was now wrapped in a cashmere shawl, like an accident victim. ‘This is the biggest case of my career. You know that.’ She couldn’t hold his gaze and coloured slightly. His stomach constricted with anger.

‘I can’t just drop everything, Mac.’

‘Then I’m sorry to have troubled you,’ he said tightly. ‘I’ll ring you at Conor’s when she turns up, shall I?’

‘Mac!’ she protested, but he had already turned away. Somehow almost nothing she had done had disappointed him as much as this.

‘
Mac!
’

He could hear Cowboy John shuffling and wheezing behind him. ‘Aw, hell, you really gonna make me do all them stairs again?’

‘The broader the chest so much the handsomer and stronger is it . . . the neck would then protect the rider and the eye see what lies before the feet.’

She couldn’t remember Papa holding her – not like Nana held her, as if it was as natural to her as breathing. When she came in from school, she would walk up to Nana’s chair and Nana would gather her up, pulling her into her nylon housecoat, that warm, sweet, powdery scent filling Sarah’s nostrils, that eiderdown bosom to be leant against, an unending source of love and security. When she wished Sarah goodnight she would hold her longer than she needed to, scolding herself.

After Nana died Sarah, overwhelmed by sadness, would sometimes lean against Papa and he would put an arm around her to pat her shoulder. But it was not an action that came naturally to him, and she always had the feeling that he was a little relieved when she pulled herself together. Sarah had felt the lack of human contact like an ache, long before she understood what it was she was missing.

Her grandfather had been sitting at the kitchen table, perhaps a year or so ago. She had walked in, back early from the stables, and asked him what he was reading. The book was familiar to her, so familiar that she had never been curious about it. And her grandfather, placing it carefully on the laminate tabletop, had begun to tell her about a man with the skill of a poet, the battlefield mastery of a general, one of the first to advocate a partnership with the horse that was not based on cruelty or force. He read her a few passages. The words, if it were not for the arcane tone of their translation, could have come from any modern-day manual on horsemanship: ‘
Whenever, therefore, you induce him to carry himself in the attitudes he naturally assumes, when he is most anxious to display his beauty, you make him look as though he takes pleasure in being ridden, and give him a noble, fierce, and attractive appearance
.’

She had edged a little closer to him on the seat.

‘This is why I always tell you you must never lose your temper with a horse. You must treat him with kindness, with respect. It’s all here. He is the father of horsemanship.’ He tapped his book.

‘He must have really loved horses,’ Sarah had said.

‘No.’ Papa had shaken his head emphatically.

‘But he said—’

‘It is not about love,’ he said. ‘There is not one mention of love in this whole book. He is not sentimental. All that he does, all the
douceur
he shows, it is because he understands that this is how you get the best out of the animal. This is how man and horse excel together. Not all this kissing-kissing.’ He had made a face and Sarah had laughed. ‘Not all this emotion. He knows that the best way for the horse and the man is simply to understand each other, to respect each other.’

‘I don’t get it.’

‘A horse does not want to be a lapdog,
chérie
. It does not want to be dressed up in ribbons, sung to, like these silly girls at the stables. A horse is
dangereux
, powerful. But it can be willing. You give a horse a reason to perform for you, to protect you, by understanding the things it wants to do itself, and there you achieve something beautiful.’

He had watched her, trying to ensure she understood. But she had felt disappointed. She had wanted to believe Boo loved her. She wanted him to follow her around the yard not because she might have food but because he needed to be with her. She did not want to think of him as the means to an end.

He patted her hand. ‘What Xenophon is asking is better. He is asking for respect, for the best of care, for consistency, fairness, kindness. Would the horse be happier if he spoke of love?
Non
.’

She had been so determined not to agree with him.

‘Surely you can see that there is love in what he does,’ he had said, his eyes wrinkling at the corners. ‘There is love in what he does, what he . . . proposes. Just because he does not speak of it, it does not mean it is not there in every word. It is there, Sarah. In. Every. Little. Act.’ He had banged the table.

She could see it now, even if she hadn’t then. It was as close as he had ever come to telling her how much he loved her.

They had rested a little way outside Sittingbourne, Sarah allowing Boo to graze the lush edges of the fields on a long rein, finally hungry enough herself to eat one of the rolls she had packed. She sat in a quiet lane on a plastic bag, protecting herself from the wet grass, and watched her horse’s head lift as he was distracted from eating by a distant crow or, on one occasion, a deer beside a copse.

Sarah had ridden fast in open country, galloping down the edges of ploughed fields, following bridle paths when she could, staying on verges to protect Boo’s legs. All the while she kept the motorway on her right, the distant hum of its traffic within earshot, knowing she could not get lost while it was close. Boo had been energised by the green. He had bucked several times when she first let him go down a long, flat stretch, his great head tossing with excitement, his tail lifting. She had found herself laughing, urging him on, even as she knew she should be conserving his energy for the hours ahead.

When had he ever been free like this? When had his eyes been filled only with distant green horizons, his hooves cushioned by soft ground? When had she been free? For a few glorious miles she allowed herself to forget what she was leaving and focus only on the sheer pleasure of being welded to this magnificent animal, sharing in his pleasure at his surroundings, feeling the joy of a superior power that was willing to accede to her. They flew down the edges of the fields, leaping small hedges and ditches filled with brackish water. Boo, infected by her mood, went faster, refusing to steady when he crossed small lanes, instead leaping them, his ears pricked, his long legs eating up the ground beneath them.

She was on wings, like Xenophon. She urged him faster, gulping, laughing, tears gathering at the corners of her eyes and streaming, horizontally, along her face. He took the bit, stretched out and ran, as horses have run since the beginning of time, for fear, for pleasure, for the glory of doing what they did. She let him. It didn’t matter where he was headed. Her heart was elastic, bursting. This was what Papa had meant, not the endless time spent perfecting one movement of his legs, not the circles, the
passage
, the careful weighing up of what could be achieved. One sentence of Papa’s kept running through her mind, rhythmic, in time with the muted thud of his hooves hitting the ground.

‘This is how you escape,’ Papa had told her.

‘Second visitor this afternoon. He
will
be pleased.’ The nurse had just closed the door behind her as they arrived at the Captain’s room. She hesitated. ‘I have to tell you, he’s not done too well the last couple of days. We’ve got the consultant coming up this afternoon, but we suspect he’s suffered another stroke. You may find him a little hard to understand.’

Mac saw the dismay on John’s face. He had already insisted on a lengthy cigarette break outside in the car park so that he could face the ordeal ahead.

‘Second visitor?’ Mac said. ‘Has his granddaughter been in?’

‘Granddaughter?’ she said brightly. ‘No . . . a boy. He seemed to know him. Nice kid.’

Cowboy John seemed hardly to register this. He gave a little shake of his head, as if pulling himself together, and they entered the room.

The Captain’s head lolled back on the pillow, his mouth slightly open. In a matter of days he appeared to have aged another ten years.

They placed themselves on each side of him, lowering themselves on to chairs carefully so that they wouldn’t wake him. Mac drummed his fingers on his knees, wondering if they should be there at all. John glanced at the old man, then stared fixedly at one of the pictures of Sarah and Boo, the tired strings of well-used Christmas decorations that hung on the walls around him. ‘I like them pictures,’ he said. ‘They’re good for him to see.’

They sat there for some time, neither willing to wake the old man and impart the catastrophic news that they had both failed him in the worst way imaginable. The Captain’s breaths were shallow, as if each one was an effort, an afterthought by a body too tired to do much more than exist. His left hand, once strong, was an atrophied claw on his chest, barely covered by the sheet. His cheeks were cadaverous, the skin dry and translucent, the mauve veins painfully visible. A transparent cup, half full of milky tea, sat on the table beside him, a rigid spout emerging upright from its lid.

Mac broke the silence. ‘We can’t tell him, John,’ he whispered.

‘It ain’t your right
not
to tell him. She’s the man’s closest kin. She gone missin’, he got a right to help us find her.’

How would he be able to do that? Mac wanted to ask. How can this knowledge do anything other than destroy him? He rested his elbows on his knees and dropped his head. He would rather have been anywhere than here. He wanted to be out combing the streets, talking to people. He would rather have been in a police station, confessing his failure as a would-be parent, canvassing Sarah’s friends. A girl and a horse couldn’t just vanish into thin air. Someone must have seen her.

‘Hey . . . hey, Capitaine . . .’

Mac looked up. Cowboy John was smiling. ‘How you doin’, you lazy son of a gun? Bored of yo’ lie-in yet?’

The Captain moved his head slowly towards him. It seemed to require an inordinate effort.

‘You want anything?’ John leant forward. ‘A drink of water? Somethin’ stronger? I got some Jimmy Beam in my pocket.’ He grinned.

The Captain blinked. He might have been signalling amusement. Or he might just have been blinking.

‘I heard you not feelin’ so good.’

The old man gazed at him steadily.

Mac could see that even John was faltering: he turned to Mac, then back to the old man.

‘Capitaine, I – I got somethin’ to tell you.’ He swallowed. ‘I got to tell you that your Sarah has done somethin’ a little crazy.’

Still the old man stared at him, his pale blue eyes unblinking now.

‘She’s took off with that horse of yours. And – and it may well be that I’m goin’ to head off from here and she’ll be back at the yard waitin’ for us. But I got to tell you, I think she’s . . .’ He took a deep breath. ‘I think she’s taken him and gone somewhere.’ Behind him, Sarah grinned in black and white, leaning forward against her horse’s neck, a stray lock of hair blown over her mouth.

‘We didn’t want to worry you,’ Mac began. ‘And I have to tell you she’s been fine with us. Really. She’s been happy – as happy as she could be without you – and certainly never given us any real cause for worry. But this morning I went into her room and that book of yours is gone and a rucksack, and when I looked into the bathroom –’

‘Mac—’ John interrupted.

‘– her toothbrush was gone. And it may well be as John says that she’s there, laughing at us, now but I wondered if there was anywhere you knew that she might be, whether—’

‘Mac, shut the hell up.’

He stopped.

John nodded towards the old man. ‘He’s tryin’ to speak,’ he said, and bent low, closer, removing his hat so that he could get his ear close to the old man’s mouth. His eyes met Mac’s. ‘No?’ he said, puzzled.

Mac leant forward in his place, straining against the hum of machinery, the chatter of nurses outside the room, to hear the breathy whisper. He sat up. ‘“I know,”’ he repeated.

The old man, he realised, was utterly unperturbed by this disclosure. There was no trace of anxiety on his features. Mac’s eyes met John’s. ‘He says he
knows
.’

 

 

 

The rain had set in around mid-afternoon. At first it was a few, tentative drops but their weight – and the fast approaching slice of black sky that scudded towards her – warned of what they heralded. It was as if daylight ended within minutes, no gradual creeping into evening, no gentle grading of sunset, just light one moment and then, seemingly minutes later, black, with heavy, drenching rain.

The driver swerved to a halt in front of her. She pulled Boo back, afraid, but the man stuck his head out of the window: ‘You idiot! You should be wearing a reflective strip,’ he yelled. ‘I could have hit you both.’

Her voice, when it emerged, was croaky, hijacked by fear. ‘I’m sorry,’ she said. ‘I – I left it behind.’