Dead Man Riding (14 page)

‘Scramlette?'

‘Nathan made it. It was meant to be omelette, but it ended up more or less scrambled eggs.'

Meredith was sitting on the grass with his back to the barn, forking some spongy substance carefully into his mouth. I accepted my plateful, picked up a half bottle of ale and a cup and sat down beside him. The ale was flat and warm but I was so thirsty I downed it in a couple of gulps, then looked up to see he was watching me.

‘Did you enjoy your walk?'

‘Yes. Is the book going well?'

He shook his head. ‘Couldn't concentrate, I'm afraid, so I took myself off for a walk as well. I followed the river down.'

‘Wouldn't that have taken you into Major Mawbray's land?'

‘Yes, I suppose it did. I didn't see anybody.'

‘Were you looking for him?'

He put the fork and plate down, with most of Nathan's offering uneaten. ‘Perceptive, aren't you Miss Bray?'

Only slightly mocking. I said that some people would call it inquisitive. I had the idea that he was making conversation with me to keep his mind off something and noticed that he was carefully not looking at the two people strolling by the hedge, no more than silhouettes now in the fading light. Was Imogen why he couldn't concentrate on his book?

‘I think it's more than inquisitive. I have the impression of a mind that progresses by grasshopper leaps.'

I thought about it and decided that this was not a compliment, coming from a philosopher. ‘That sounds a little too much like women's instinct as opposed to man's pure reason.'

‘I didn't mean it. Besides, is there any such thing as pure reason? All we have are our own minds to reason with and we're impure creatures, even the best of us.'

We'd both given up any attempt at eating by then. Kit, Nathan and Midge had gone off somewhere so the two of us seemed very much on our own, perched above a sweep of woods and fields caught between light and dark, not quite real.

‘And yes, I admit it,' he said. ‘I half-intended to look for Major Mawbray, but how did you guess that?'

‘Because he's probably the man who can answer the one question we need answered.'

‘Only one?'

‘The one to start with anyway. Is his son alive or dead? If there are rumours around that he's alive and hiding, he'd surely know them.'

‘So we walk up and ask him? That was what I was wondering when I was walking on his land. What happens if I do meet him?'

‘We'd ask, I think.'

‘And would he tell us?'

‘Probably not, but we might learn something from the way he didn't tell us.'

He laughed, ‘Do we do it then?'

Even if he was only trying to keep his mind off something else, I was pleased he wanted my opinion. ‘I think we probably should, only…'

‘Only?'

‘It's hard to put into words, but it's as if once we start asking questions properly we make it real in a way it hasn't quite been before.'

‘It seemed real enough down in the police station.'

‘Yes, but we're sitting up here and the Old Man and his horses are up here and – I know this isn't at all logical – but it feels as if while we don't do anything it can't touch us.'

‘So we do nothing after all?'

‘And then one day the police come down the drive and arrest the Old Man. Perhaps they'd only lock him up in a lunatic asylum, but I think he probably wouldn't live long, shut up and away from his horses.'

‘You care about him?'

‘Yes, I think I do. He's one of the most infuriating people I've ever met and his views on where women belong are worse than a sultan's in a harem. But I admire anybody who's lived life the way he has – making the world behave the way he wants it to.'

‘Until now.'

‘Exactly. There's a sadness about him as if he's only just come up against the limits of what he can do.'

‘If he's managed to get into his seventies before that's happened to him, he's been a fortunate man.'

The hedge and the field edge closest to it were dark now although the sky was still white-gold. You couldn't see the two silhouettes any more.

‘So you think finding out more will help him?'

‘We need some more facts,' I said. ‘There aren't enough of them.'

He laughed, ‘You sound as if you could go out and buy facts, so much a dozen, like this.' There were a few eggs left over from the scramlette. Somebody, Midge probably, had bedded them down on a little heap of hay by the barn wall. He picked up one of them and held it in the palm of his hand. ‘But they're an awkward commodity, facts. They tend to change their nature depending on who's looking at them.'

‘But an egg stays an egg,' I said.

And all of a sudden the little pale oval was up in the air between us. He'd thrown it. Almost unthinkingly, I put my hand up and caught it. It nestled unbroken in my palm as if the hen had laid it there. Meredith and I stared at each other, surprised.

‘Is it still the same egg, now it's in your hand instead of mine?'

‘It wouldn't have been the same egg if I hadn't caught it. Was that what you meant?'

Instead of answering he laughed, an ordinary open sort of laugh as if some problem had been solved, though I couldn't see what. ‘It's getting dark. We should see you all back to the house.'

He stood up. I put the egg carefully back with the others, started to get up, caught my skirt hem on the heel of my boot and stumbled. He put out a hand to me and pulled me up.

‘You're tired. It must have been a long walk.'

I wanted to explain that it wasn't tiredness at all, just the confounded hem, but when our hands met a pleasurable little shock went through me. He was still talking.

‘Midge says you know this part of the world well. Perhaps we might take a walk together one day.'

‘Nell, Midge?' Imogen was calling from the field. ‘Are you there?'

Her voice was still full of happiness, but just a little uncertain. When I answered from the darkness she sounded relieved. ‘Alan's walking with me back to the yard. I think we should all go.'

So we made up a party down the track, Alan and Imogen in front, then Midge, Meredith and me. Back in our loft over the tack room the moonlight came in through the windows, unsettlingly bright. It kept us awake for hours, that and Imogen telling us what good friends we were, and how right we were about being completely honest with men and how lucky we were to be alive now in this century and this summer.

Chapter Nine

N
EXT DAY THE OLD MAN ANNOUNCED THAT HE
was taking Sid on his ride to the sea and we were all welcome to come along or not as it suited us. He made the announcement to me, like issuing a challenge, as I was walking back across the yard from the earth closet just after sunrise.

‘We're going first thing tomorrow. Still game to come with me, then?'

It took me a moment to remember about the ride and I must have hesitated, because he laughed. ‘Yes,' I said quickly, ‘I'd love to.'

‘No side saddles here. You'll have to ride leg-over.'

Was that meant to put me off? I said that was all right as well and had the satisfaction of seeing him look a little disconcerted. The fact was, although I'd been taught to ride sidesaddle like any other young Victorian lady my brother and I had spent a few harum-scarum summers with the cousin who later went into the cavalry, riding tough little moorland ponies astride with only a blanket to sit on. Later in our wanderings round Europe I'd ridden ponies and mules high up in the mountains where it didn't matter if you rode astride, sideways or backwards hanging on to the tail as long as you stayed on.

‘Think any of your friends will want to come?'

‘Why don't you ask them? We'll all be up at the barn this morning as usual.'

He came walking up the field at about ten, when we'd cleared up the breakfast things and were just settling down to the
Republic
. Progress on it had been slow so far. He was wearing jodhpurs and gaiters as usual, bareheaded although the sun was already hot. The men got to their feet when he arrived but he signed to them to sit down.

‘Taking the horses for a bit of exercise tomorrow. Want to come?'

I'd warned them so they'd had time to think about it. Alan and Nathan said immediately, yes please. So, rather to my surprise, did Meredith. I'd imagined horses hadn't played much part in his scholarly life. Midge said honestly that she hadn't ridden a horse since she was ten and didn't mind if she never did again. Kit gestured at his bandaged arm by way of an excuse and although the Old Man probably knew men who'd broken both arms and ridden on with the reins in their teeth he accepted it with good grace.

‘You can look after the womenfolk then. Sleep in the house, use my bed if you like. Dulcie will feed you. The rest of us will be starting as soon as it gets light tomorrow. We'll be sleeping out by the beach, so you'd better all bring blankets with you if you think you'll need them.'

He walked away down the field, leaving some consternation among the horse contingent.

‘Sleeping out?' Nathan said. ‘Is it going to take that long?'

About fourteen miles as the crow flies, I told him.

‘Please God my horse knows what it's doing.' (That, come to think of it, was the first time I'd heard him make even a passing reference to things theological.) We worked on Plato for a bit longer but our minds weren't really on it and around lunchtime we all walked down to the stable yard to find the Old Man and Robin making preparations for the ride. With bits of tack and saddlebags lined up along a wall in the sun it looked like a nomad camp preparing to move off and in the middle of it the Old Man seemed happier than at any time since we'd arrived. Some of the horses needed shoeing. Robin was about to go to the lower paddock for two of the mares while the Old Man went up the lane for Sid, then Robin would take them in a bunch to a forge somewhere between there and the town. Alan and I went with Robin. The mares were right down by the river so by the time we got back with them, Sid and the Old Man were already in the stable yard. The little stallion looked as fine as ever, coat gleaming, mane and tail like spun sugar. He had his head up, sniffing the air. Robin was worried that one of the mares had been kicked on the hock and the Old Man said he'd come and have a look at it.

‘Hold on to him.'

He threw the end of Sid's head-collar rope to Alan who was standing next to him. Alan caught the rope, turned to say something to Imogen and—

‘Hold him! Don't let him!' the Old Man yelled.

The whinnying squeal from Sid, heard from a few feet away, was as loud as if we'd been standing beside a steam whistle. The stallion's front legs came up and for a split second he stood almost vertically on his hind legs, pawing the air. His hind hooves were slipping on the flagstones and it looked terrifyingly as if he might go over backwards.

‘Keep
hold
of him.'

But the rope had been twitched out of Alan's hands as soon as the horse raised his head. He made a brave grab for it but stumbled, then Sid's front feet came smashing down within a few inches of his hand and the horse galloped off across the yard, still whinnying, to where the Old Man and Robin were standing with the mares.

Midge said, shakily, ‘Would you believe it? He doesn't like being parted from—'

But it was the kicked mare Sid was making for, not his owner. Robin tried to pull her out of the way, but Sid reared himself up on her hindquarters, clasping her firmly with his forelegs. His teeth were bared and the steam-whistle noise was fit to crack the sky. The mare snaked her neck round, looking terrified, and tried to bite Sid but his legs held her clamped firm and she couldn't reach. Robin was shouting something, in Irish I thought, and trying to pull the mare away. But the Old Man ran to her head.

‘Too late now. Better let him get on with it.'

They held the terrified mare's head between them, stroking her sweating neck, murmuring things meant to calm her, while the stallion got on with his work. After all the noise it was over remarkably quickly. Sid slid off the mare, clumsily, snorting, the Old Man grabbed the rope and led him away into a box while Robin calmed and gentled the mare. At that point I noticed two things. The first of them was Imogen's face. I think she'd probably gone running to Alan when he slipped because she was standing beside him, but not looking at him now. Her eyes were on the mare and she was as pale and horrified as if she'd just witnessed a fatal accident. The other was Dulcie, who must have come into the yard at some time while it was going on. She was looking at the mare too, but smiling. None of us spoke until the Old Man came back and the mare was led, still sweating and quivering, to a box on the far side of the yard.

Alan said, sounding wretched, ‘I'm very sorry sir. I couldn't hold him.'

The Old Man put an arm round his shoulder. ‘Don't you worry, my boy. Anyway, I should have noticed she'd come into season. It wasn't the time of year I'd have chosen for her, but you can't argue with nature and with luck we'll get a good foal out of her next year.'

Then he went over to Dulcie and quite openly, in view of all of us, did what he'd done in the tack room and slid an arm round her haunches. He put his mouth to her ear and said something. I happened to be standing next to them and heard, or perhaps misheard. It sounded like, ‘You'd think he'd know when he'd done it, wouldn't you?' When he'd put his hand on Dulcie her smile hadn't changed, but now it faded suddenly and her face was anxious. She looked on the point of saying something but decided against it. Robin came out of the mare's box with bucket and sponge, looking apologetic.

‘Will I get Senta from the field instead, sir?'

‘Yes. Check her shoes and take her down with the others if she needs it. Tell Kerr I'll be down separately later with Sid.'