The life suited him perfectly and his ambitions stretched no further than a first at the county show and girls with looser morals than the ones he seemed doomed to meet. Until that is he went to the international show in Dublin. Suddenly he saw how it could be. Men strolled about with posses of horses and strings of grooms, not to mention adoring girl followers, talking confidently of Rotterdam, Wembley, Toronto and even the Olympic Games. They had gloss and glamour, and Pat wanted to be amongst them. His imagination took off and when next he looked at the little farm with its stock of dodgy horses and the tack held together with string it was not enough.
The family rued the day that Pat had gone to the horse show. He turned their lives upside down, demanding better horses, better tack, more shows, more time, more everything. No one was left untouched and if they often cursed the effort in the end they shared the triumph, and triumphs there were. At the age of eighteen Pat was competing throughout the country. Some days he would win, but on others he did not, and with his usual honesty he faced up to the reason. He lacked the discipline and technical polish of those at the top. He would never achieve much until he acquired them, and that he could not do at home. The very things that made life in Ireland so pleasant, the courtesy, the timelessness, the art of making do, all combined to make it impossible for him to succeed there. He landed a job in England, with Tom Spence, a top class rider based in the south.
Pat’s father was furious. ‘How the hell d’you think I’m going to manage without you? I suppose you think it’ll be all drink and women. Get out of my way boy, the sight of your face sickens me.’
He didn’t mean it and if he was honest with himself, and like his son he tended to be, he had to admit that it was probably best. His wife said it was. Pat would not take second place and Charlie Brogan was in no great hurry to give up his role as cock of the midden. The rows had been getting worse and the day was coming when Pat would not back down. Yes, he was better in England thought Charlie, continuing to curse and create.
The family waved farewell on a morning of rain and wind. Charlie stayed home and felt bad about it; Patrick felt worse for the crossing was rough but whether he was seasick, homesick or just plain frightened he did not know.
He arrived at Spence’s yard late at night and his welcome was uninspiring. They were polite, but by Irish standards unfriendly in that they took little interest in the new boy. It was a rather depressed Patrick who went to bed in the cold little room above the stables.
He awoke the following morning in better spirits and to the sound of buckets clattering in the yard. He dashed downstairs and was greeted with a roar of fury from Tom Spence.
‘What time do you think this is, for God’s sake? Six o’clock, I said and six I meant, not half past bloody seven. And wipe that smile off your face, damn you.’
Pat’s incredulous grin disappeared on command and he forgot any explanations he had intended. He did not feel they would be welcomed. By the end of the day he was a very chastened young man.
The horses were magnificent, better than any he had ridden at home, but in Spence’s eyes he could do nothing right. His seat was wrong, his hands were heavy, but above all he was slow. Spence wanted him working every minute of the day and even when he was running everywhere Spence accused him of dawdling. It was some months later that he realised with a shock that he had been doing just that. By then the routine was coming a little more easily and he was able to see what a country yokel he had been, mentally leaning on gates while others zoomed past, intent on their goals. He almost gave up and went home. The life there had a flavour which was lacking in this efficient, concrete world and in his rare moments of leisure he could have wept for the familiar muddle of his father’s farm. But because he hated to lose, and would not admit defeat to Spence, he stayed.
One fine spring day he was working a horse over fences in the home paddock, concentrating totally on what he was doing. It was difficult, the horse was very stiff on one side, had the lightest mouth and the brain of a gnat, but its one saving grace was an incredible jump. At last he felt he had achieved something and pulled up panting. Spence walked over from the gate and Pat groaned inwardly. He had not known he was there and whenever Spence watched him there was sure to be trouble.
‘Well, Pat.’ The man looked at him gravely. ‘You’re not the boy you were when you came here, that’s for sure.’
‘No sir,’ replied Pat with feeling. He had been a human being then, not the automaton he was now.
‘I liked the way you worked that horse, he’s not easy. Come over to the house, we’ll look at your contract.’
With growing amazement Pat followed Spence into the luxurious sitting room, hallowed ground never trodden by him before, and drank real coffee made by Spence’s wife. He emerged half an hour later walking on air. He had a new contract, he was to go on tour with Spence that summer and he had been promoted to the stable flat, which had central heating. He blotted his copy book that evening when two of the stable lads had to carry him home from the pub and he was sick in the yard, but since he was there, grey faced, at six the next morning, no one commented.
‘They wouldn’t notice if I bloody died,’ thought Pat bitterly, splashing his aching head with ice cold water from the horse trough.
He stayed with Spence for five years, and emerged with a career and a friend. He deserved success, he worked for it unceasingly and he had undoubted talent. That Spence should have become his friend was perhaps more surprising, since on the face of it no two men could have been more dissimilar. Spence was older, quieter, more placid in every way than the volatile Patrick. He had started in the jumping world when there were no rich pickings to be had and he had made a living through perfectionism. He left nothing to chance, all that needed to be done was done and more, even if it meant they all dropped in their tracks. His influence on Pat was enormous once the boy realised that the man did not dislike him, only what he regarded as his sloppy habits. Once these were gone the door was open and on the long drives and the dark, cold evenings in strange towns they each found much to like in the other. Pat would have been very surprised had he heard what Spence said to his wife about him.
‘The boy’s brilliant, May,’ he said, struggling out of his boots as he prepared for bed. ‘You should have seen him at Cardiff, it was really stiff but he was as cool as you like. I couldn’t have done it at his age, I’ll tell you that. Sometimes it’s as if he can read those horses’s minds.’
‘You’ve changed your tune since he first came,’ smiled his wife.
‘Christ, he rode like a ploughboy when he wasn’t daydreaming. But he had something, even then. Now - well, he’ll be heading back to Ireland soon no doubt, setting up on his own. I’ll be sorry to see him go, he’s a nice lad. Doesn’t brood, even when things don’t go his way.’
Spence had no son and he constantly had to remind himself that it did not do to get too fond of these lads. In years to come he would find it harder and harder to keep his place at the top with the Brogans of this world scrabbling for a foothold.
‘I hope he marries a nice girl.’ His wife was preparing to read a romantic novel, her reading glasses perched on the end of her nose.
‘Yes. That could ruin him. In this game you need a special sort of lady.’
He leaned over and gave his wife an affectionate kiss on the top of the head. She giggled and blushed like a young girl.
‘Really, Tom, I don’t know what’s come over you.’
Neither did he and he was concentrating intently on his pyjama buttons.
They settled down to sleep and in the dark she laid her cheek quietly against his back.
Patrick was also in bed, but he and his partner were not talking. They adored each other’s bodies, he and Barbara, and time spent doing anything except making love was, as they agreed, time wasted. Not that they didn’t have a lot in common, as he told his parents. Horses, for one thing. Barbara had an event horse which she rode when she could get away from her job as a ju
nior with a TV company. They had met at an event, he showjumping, she completing an erratic crosscountry course before going on to a party. In the end they had gone to the party together, and then on to a club, and then back to Pat’s flat and the most incredible sexual experience of his life. Although by no means a virgin when he met Barbara he was still a comparative innocent, whereas she, golden daughter of a rich man, had no need of innocence. Why, they even looked alike, both tall, blond, Pat’s merry blue eyes matched by Barbara’s liquid brown ones. Where she was tanned with the sun of Greece he was as brown for he was never indoors. They were perfect for each other. True, her parents were a little doubtful but he was so charming and so successful that they could not quibble for long.
Everyone came to the wedding, held at a Catholic church in Barbara’s parish. She was not a Catholic and had no wish to become one, but it hardly seemed to matter. Pat almost never went to Church himself. The two sets of relations mixed oddly, the Irish contingent slightly shabby and out of place when set against the expensive county perfection of Barbara’s family, all pinstripe and pure silk dresses. Fortunately both families were outnumbered by the couple’s horsey friends and afterwards when the drink flowed and the dancing began, it was hard to distinguish between the two.
They were to start their life in Ireland. Pat had approached sponsors there and had hopes of a place on the Irish team, while Barbara thought she might be able to get a job with Irish television.
Houses were cheap too, and when they settled on a delightful old farm some distance from Pat’s parents their future seemed assured.
What was it that went wrong? In the years since Pat had spent aeons of his life trying to understand it. Money was a big problem of course, for Barbara had never been poor while Patrick had never been rich. Before they married there had been money to have fun with, but now, with horses to buy and a house to run, it was tight. They fought, bitterly, when she went to Dublin and bought clothes and when he went to a show and bought drinks. To Barbara the solution was simple. If horses did not make enough he must do something else. Predictably, Patrick was appalled. Didn’t she understand, horses were his life!
Then again his view of women was different from hers. The television job had not materialised and Patrick hardly saw that it mattered. To him, a woman’s job was an amusement, albeit profitable, until she had children and started real work. To realise that Barbara viewed herself as worthless without a job was something he found difficult to understand. She had been so casual about her work before, joking that in ten years’ time they might let her graduate to making the tea, yet now she was behaving as if she had lost everything. And the jobs she could have, that she could do, she thought beneath her. His irritation grew and grew.
Within a year they were in deep trouble. To Barbara it seemed that Pat had everything his way, everything he wanted, all at her expense. Patrick saw only that she complained unceasingly, blaming him for things he could do nothing about.
She was a woman, he was a man, and it was a fine time now to discover you didn’t like it. Yes, he knew his mother was a different generation, he didn’t expect Barbara to live that kind of life, but she wanted children didn’t she? No, she did not.
Patrick never really believed her. Perhaps that had been the root of it, whenever she said things that didn’t fit in with his idea of the way she was, he ignored them. The real Barbara, the one Patrick hardly knew, was left screaming and hammering at a closed door.
They both tried, to the limits of their patience. He gave her treats he could ill afford, she attacked the house like one possessed. But the bank statements and the rows kept on coming and soon they had an overdraft and a houseful of unfinished patchwork and half-set jars of jam. She wouldn’t come to shows any more, where she was the drudge, the moth to Patrick’s flame. She stayed at home and moped. Then even his luck deserted him. Suddenly it seemed as if he could win nothing, and the more he tried the worse it got. He was pushing too hard and he knew it. The sponsors started to mutter, as if he wanted to lose for God’s sake! He was too tense, that was the trouble, coming straight from a row at home to another at the show. What he needed was a drink. For a while it helped, and he had a run of little successes, but then he began to drink after jumping as well, seriously, to give him the courage to go home. He knew how it would be when he got there. Barbara, white, drawn, her hair strawlike, the house a mess. What had he done to his golden girl? Why couldn’t he make her happy?
One day he came home to an empty house. His first thought was that she had left him, but no, nothing was packed. The hours went by and still she didn’t come, he telephoned his parents, the police, the hospital. No one knew where she was. He spent the night drinking and dozing. In the morning she came back, and he knew she had been with a man. It was there in the languorous turn of her head, the light in her velvet brown eyes. Someone, last night, had made love to her.
She did not trouble to deny it. He was a writer, from London, and it had been going on for weeks. What is more, she was pregnant though whether by him or Patrick she did not know, but he needn’t worry because she was going to have an abortion. Their marriage was over and she for one wished it had never started. She was leaving for good.
She had stopped then, when she saw the shock and anger in his face. In her world, irreligious, rich and liberal, divorce was commonplace. In his it was not. Suddenly nervous, she went quickly upstairs and turned on the bath.
Patrick sat slumped in a chair, almost unable to think. Pictures flashed through his mind, Barbara, his Barbara, naked, laughing, while another man pressed his mouth to her breasts. Spreading herself, willingly, while the stranger filled her with his seed. And made her pregnant! The fury of it choked him, not for a moment did he think it could possibly be his child. The bitch, the whore, the cow. He burst into the bathroom like one possessed, filled with the rage and the hurt that had been building inside him for months. When he left her it was to ring for an ambulance. She was filling the bath with her blood.
* * *
Then came the time that ever afterwards he hated to remember. Barbara lay in her hospital bed, stained by bruises, drained almost of life, and her family gathered around like crows round a rabbit. No one let him come near her, no one would listen when he tried to explain. Her pregnancy had gone of course, and even to himself he would not speak of a baby. There had been no baby, just a vile, encroaching lie that spoke of failure and loss and betrayal. It was gone and he was thankful. Now, if he could only talk to Barbara, they could surely find some way to start again.
He never saw her again. One day she was gone from the hospital and when he went home they had taken her things. The house was a wreck, half of everything gone, even two pictures from a set of four. The double bed was still there though, she had taken the one from the spare room. Patrick lay on the rumpled, crumb-infested covers and wept.
There seemed to be nothing left to live for. It came as no surprise when the sponsors pulled out, and in fact he was almost grateful. There was relief in being punished. Swept by a desire to see the end of everything, Pat sold the house and was only prevented from selling his horses by his father, who whisked them off to his yard before Patrick could protest.
‘Wait a while, lad,’ advised Charlie. ‘You’ll feel different in a few months.’
All Patrick felt was that he wanted a drink. That was all he ever wanted these days.
Had it not been for Tom Spence he might never have returned to jumping. As it was, he paid Pat a visit just in time, he was going to sell the horses.
‘Just thought I’d drop in,’ he said casually as if he habitually travelled two hundred miles for a cup of coffee. The pale, lined face before him looked nothing like the happy young man he had waved goodbye to so recently. He did not seem to be listening to what was said to him. Spence pressed on. ‘I heard about Barbara.’ Still no response. He let the silence hang, a feeling of the futility of it all oppressing him. He noticed Pat’s hands, trembling slightly, and suddenly he was
angry.
‘Do you know what they’re saying about you?’ he snapped. The blue eyes looked up vaguely.
Who?’
‘Who do you think? Everyone that matters, that’s who. They’re saying you’re a burnt out case. Some early promise but no grit. One little knock and you’re drinking like a fish. They’re just waiting for your horses to come up for sale, they’re all hoping for a bargain.'
He strolled over to the window. ‘That’s the trouble with you Irish, of course, no stamina when it comes down to it. Very flashy but in the end nothing worth talking about. I’m sorry I wasted so much time on you.’
He turned to leave, but Patrick was on his feet. 'Wait, Tom. Look - there’s no way I could start again now, even if I wanted to. I haven’t the money and there’s no one willing to stake me now, you know that.’
‘Not in Ireland, perhaps. But why not come back with me?’ He spoke slowly, not sure if he was doing the lad a favour. ‘There’s a man I know. He’s new to the game, pots of money burning a hole in his pocket, wants to sponsor someone. He’s not stupid but he isn’t in the know. He won’t have heard about this recent bit of trouble, I’m sure of that. He might take you on.’
‘Why don’t you want him?’
Spence grinned at the suspicion in Pat’s voice. ‘I’m too old to be tied to someone’s apron strings. But you’re not, it could do you the world of good. Keep you off this stuff.’ He gestured distastefully at the whiskey bottle standing on the table. ‘God knows how you drink it, smells like sewer water to me.’
Pat smiled, for the first time in many weeks. ‘You’re right,’ he said. ‘I think I’ll give it up.’
A Summer Frost Page 9