Airs Above the Ground

by Mary Stewart

  Tim said: ‘Vanessa’s a vet.’

  Her eyes widened. ‘You? Are you? Oh, then—’

  ‘Has the horse been working?’ I asked.

  She shook her head. ‘He doesn’t work, he is old, I think more than twenty. My Uncle Franzl had him in Czechoslovakia even before he joined us ten years ago. They tried at first to use him – they had a liberty act then with mixed horses – but he was slow to learn, so he has done very little. He was a pet of my Uncle Franzl’s, or perhaps my father would not have kept him. I told you, we cannot afford to keep a horse that does not work, so in the old days, before there was money for all the tractors and motor caravans, he helped to pull a wagon, and Uncle Franzl used to ride him, and give rides to the children. But now . . .’ she looked distressed . . . ‘if he is ill – we are moving the horses in a few hours, and in three days we have Austria and cross the frontier. I am afraid of what my father will say.’

  ‘You’ve found something?’ said Timothy to me.

  I had indeed found something. Just above the knee on the off foreleg was a nasty swelling. I showed this to them, investigating further, while the old horse stood with drooping head, turning once to nuzzle me as my fingers felt and probed the leg.

  I said to Tim: ‘Hold his head, will you? Gently, there, old man.’

  ‘What is it?’ asked Annalisa, peering over my shoulder.

  ‘It’s a haematoma, a blood-swelling. He must have hurt himself during the fire, or perhaps had a kick from a loose horse, and he’s torn one of the flexor tendons . . . Look, these, here . . . It wouldn’t show for a day or two, and if he isn’t working nobody would notice. And the rug’s been hiding the swelling. But he must be dealt with now. It’s a very nasty leg.’

  ‘Yes, I can see, it looks terrible. But how “dealt with”? What will you do?’

  I looked up. ‘I? I’m not your veterinary surgeon, Annalisa. You’ll have to get the man from Bruck. I ought not to interfere.

  ‘He ought not to have missed it.’ said Tim roundly. ‘Anybody could see the beast’s ill.’

  ‘No,’ I said, ‘be fair. I’m sure in the normal course of things somebody would have seen it, but the circus’s own horsekeeper is dead, and Herr Wagner’s had far too much on his plate this past week. I told you this wouldn’t develop straight away, and if no one called the veterinary surgeon’s attention to it later, it could easily have been overlooked.’

  ‘What will have to be done?’ asked Annalisa.

  ‘It ought to be lanced – cut – and drained, and the leg stitched.’

  ‘Could you do it?’

  I straightened up. ‘If you mean do I know how, yes, I do. But you have a veterinary surgeon, Annalisa, you should get him.’

  ‘On a Sunday night? At nearly midnight? And we leave for the train at six?’

  Tim said: ‘Couldn’t you, Vanessa?’

  ‘Tim, I shouldn’t. I don’t know what the etiquette is here, and I’ve no business to walk in and do the man’s work for him. Come to that, it is professional “work”. It’s probably even illegal, without permits or something. Besides, I’ve no instruments.’

  ‘There are Uncle Franzl’s things.’ said Annalisa. ‘They were saved. I have them in my wagon. Please, Vanessa.’

  ‘It’s nothing to do with the chap from Bruck, anyway,’ said Tim. ‘He’ll have been paid, won’t he? Now the circus moves on, and that’s an end of him.’

  ‘Yes!’ She took him up eagerly. Between them the old horse stood motionless, his coat rough under my hand. It felt hot and scurfy. ‘You will be our new vet! I appoint you, I myself! And if it is not legal, then nobody need know!’

  A new voice spoke from the tent door, startling us all.

  ‘If what is not legal?’

  7

  Dost think I am a horse-doctor?

  Marlowe: Doctor Faustus

  Herr Wagner himself stood there, a thick-set, powerful-looking man, with a big head and a mane of brown hair going grey. He had a ruddy, weather-beaten complexion, and brown eyes under fierce brows. These now took in the scene with lively curiosity.

  Behind him was a taller man, a slim, wiry figure in black whom I recognised as the Star-Attraktion of the high wire, the Hungarian Sandor Balog. He had dark hair slicked back above a broad forehead with thin black brows ‘winged’ above eyes so dark they were almost black. The nose was flattish and the cheekbones wide, and when he smiled, the lower lids of his eyes lifted, tilting the eyes and giving the face a Mongolian look. The nostrils were prominent and sharply carved, the lips full and well shaped. A disturbing face, perhaps a cruel one. He wasn’t smiling now. He was looking, not (as one might have expected) at the two strangers near the horse’s head, but with fixed intensity at Annalisa.

  ‘Who are your friends, Liesl?’ asked Herr Wagner.

  ‘Father! Lieber Gott, but you startled me! I never heard you! Oh, this is Mrs March, she is English, staying in the village, and this is Tim, who travels with her . . .’

  She included the Hungarian in her introductions. I noticed that she didn’t look directly at him, whereas he never took his eyes off her, except to brush me, momentarily, with an indifferent glance. Herr Wagner greeted us courteously, then his eyes went to the horse.

  ‘But what was this about a vet? Did I hear properly? And what is “not legal”?’

  Annalisa hesitated, started to speak, then glanced at me. ‘You permit?’ Then, turning back to her father, she plunged into a flood of German which, from her gestures, was the story of her acquaintance with us, and the recent discovery of Piebald’s injury.

  To all this, after the first minute or so, the Hungarian paid little attention. I noticed that as the name of Lee Elliott occurred in the narrative, his gaze sharpened on the girl, so that I wondered if Sandor Balog, like me, had credited Mr Elliott with ‘intentions’ in that direction. If so, he didn’t like it. But after a bit, it appeared, the narrative bored him. He wandered into the next stall – the end one of the row, where harness hung and trestles stood with saddles over them – and stood there, idly fingering the bright jewellery on Maestoso Leda’s saddle, but still watching the girl.

  She finished her story on a strong note of persuasion, where I caught the word ‘Bruck’, and a significant glance at her watch.

  But – not much to my surprise – Herr Wagner didn’t lend his weight to her appeal. He turned to me and in broadly accented but quite fluent English, thanked me for what he called my ‘trouble’ and ‘great kindness’, but finally, ‘believed he must not trouble me’.

  ‘My daughter is young, and a little’ – he shrugged his wide shoulders and smiled charmingly – ‘a little impulsive . . . She should not be asking you this thing. You are a visitor, a lady, this is not a thing to invite a lady to do.’

  I laughed. ‘It’s not that. I am a veterinary surgeon, and I’m used to worse jobs than this, it was only that – well, it simply isn’t my affair. You have your own man. He’d certainly come tonight if you telephoned. If you haven’t got the telephone here, I’ll do it for you, if you like, from the Gasthof Edelweiss . . . or rather, Tim will. He speaks German.’

  Herr Wagner didn’t answer for a minute. He had come into the stall and was examining the horse with some care.

  ‘. . . Yes, I see. I see. I am ashamed that this was not seen. I will speak to Hans and Rudi; but you understand, gnädige Frau, there has been so much . . . and always my cousin Franzl he sees to this old horse himself. The boys perhaps were doing their own work – their own regular horses, verstehen Sie? – and this old one, he is missed. The poor old one, yes . . .’

  He ran a caressing hand down the horse’s neck, gave it a pat that had something valedictory about it, and straightened up.

  ‘Well, it is late. You will have some coffee before you go, eh? No, no, I mean it. My Liesl always makes the coffee at this hour . . . This is why I come to find her, she is neglecting her old father.’

  ‘Thanks very much,’ I said, ‘but if I’m to ring this man up for you,
I’d better get straight back. It’s after midnight.’

  Herr Wagner said: ‘I shall not trouble you, gnädige Frau.’

  It was Timothy who understood before I did, who had seen the significance of that farewell caress, and had added to it Annalisa’s reiteration that ‘no circus can afford to keep a horse which does not work’. One could not blame Herr Wagner for his decision to jettison old Piebald now; he hadn’t earned his keep for quite some time, and, according to Annalisa, hadn’t even qualified for a pension. A working circus cannot keep pets.

  I saw Timothy stiffen, still holding the headstall, his eyes fixed on Herr Wagner. His free hand crept to the horse’s nose, cupping round the soft muzzle in a gesture at once protective, and pathetically futile. The horse lipped his fingers. Tim looked at me.

  I said: ‘Herr Wagner, I’ll operate now, if you’ll let me. It’ll be over in half an hour, and once I’ve got the leg fixed up you can move him to the train. He’ll be as right as rain and fit for work in three or four weeks.’

  Herr Wagner stopped in the tent doorway. I thought he was going to brush the matter aside, but Tim said, ‘Please,’ in a voice as young and unprotected as his face, and I saw the older man hesitate.

  ‘Yes, father, please,’ said the girl.

  The Hungarian said nothing. You would have thought we were all of us separated from him by a glass screen. He had Annalisa’s saddle and cloth over his arm now, and was waiting to follow Herr Wagner out of the stable.

  Herr Wagner spread his hands wide in a gesture of deprecation. ‘But we cannot ask you—’ he began.

  ‘I wish you would,’ I said, and smiled. I put everything I had into that smile. ‘That’s all we need to make it legal.’

  Annalisa said suddenly: ‘No! It is I who ask! After all this talk, it is I! I had forgotten! This was Uncle Franzl’s horse, so now it is mine . . .’ She swung round on her father, hands spread in what was almost a parody of his own gesture. ‘Is this not so, father? Did not Uncle Franzl leave me all his things . . . all that were saved, the pictures, and his flute, and the parrot . . . and old Piebald, too? So if he is mine, and I ask Vanessa to look after him . . . and if he can go to the train . . .?’

  She finished back on the note of pleading, but her father was already laughing, his square brown face lit up and rayed with wrinkles.

  ‘So . . . you see how she rules me, this child of mine? Always a reason she finds to have her way – like her mother she is, very the same as her mother. Oh, yes, it is true that Franzl wished you to have everything . . . it is true perhaps that the horse is yours . . .’ He gave his great ringmaster’s laugh, so that the sleeping horses stirred in their stalls, and the chains jingled and rang. ‘All right, all right, if you wish, if you wish, children all of you. What do you need, gnädige Frau?’

  ‘The instruments Annalisa said she had. Hot water. Nylon suturing material. I’ll have to give an anti-tetanus injection; have you got the stuff? Good. And more light. I don’t want to move him, I’d rather do it in his own stall, it’ll upset him less, but I must have some sort of spotlight.’

  ‘I have a good flashlight,’ said Annalisa. ‘It’s in my wagon. And Sandor has one, too. Will you get it, Sandor, please?’

  ‘Natürlich.’ It was as if a puppet had spoken – or rather, a creature from the ballet stage, so remote from us had that black-clad, graceful figure been in the shadows of the end stall. His voice was curiously light and hard. He spoke pleasantly enough, without emphasis, and had turned to go, when I stopped him.

  ‘No, please . . . Thank you all the same, but it doesn’t matter. A flashlight won’t be enough. I wondered if someone could rig a light down here off a long flex? You know, a wire.’

  ‘That is easy to do,’ said Herr Wagner, adding in German, ‘Sandor, would you be good enough to do this for them? You know where to find the flex and all the things you need. Don’t lumber yourself with that saddle, just leave it here. Annalisa won’t mind if it stays here for the night for once.’

  ‘I was going to take it to my own wagon to mend it. I see some stitching is loose.’

  Tim translated in my ear: ‘It’s all right. He’s only taking the saddle to dump in his own wagon, and then he’s going to get a flex and rig the light. I say, I’m sure he was going to have the old horse put down.’

  ‘I thought so, too.’

  ‘Is this a bad operation?’

  ‘Not at all. Have you never seen this kind of thing before?’

  ‘No, only the usual minor things, fomentations and so on. I’m afraid I shan’t be much help, but I’ll do my best if you want.’

  ‘Herr Wagner probably knows all about it, but thanks all the same. I’d a lot sooner have you than the boy friend, anyway.’

  ‘Him? You don’t think he is, do you?’

  I laughed. ‘No, only that he’d like to be. He doesn’t look the type to run errands for girls otherwise. And what else did he come here for? Just to carry her saddle away for her? He didn’t look too pleased to be co-opted as lighting expert.’

  ‘If it comes to that,’ said Tim, ‘he offered to stitch it up for her, or something, if I got it right. His German’s a lot worse than his English.’

  ‘Well, there you are,’ I said, vaguely, then forgot about Sandor Balog. What mattered now was the horse.

  Once Herr Wagner had made up his mind to let me operate, he was helpfulness itself. The stablemen had all gone off duty; they had the early start to face, and were getting their sleep. But Herr Wagner and Annalisa stayed, and we had a surprise helper in the shape of the dwarf who was the clowns’ butt in the entrée. His name was Elemer, and like Sandor Balog he was a Hungarian, being, I supposed, the ‘Hungarian gentleman’ who ‘had the advantage of only being three feet high’ and who had been helping Mr Elliott with the stable work in the recent emergency. He certainly seemed to know where everything was, unlike Balog, who did bring flex and tools as requested, but thereafter restricted his help to watching the dwarf and lifting him to reach the light socket – this last with some comment in Hungarian which made the little man flush angrily and compress his lips. And when the light was finally rigged, the Star-Attraktion retired gracefully into the shadows of the next stall to watch the performance, while the dwarf bustled to help Annalisa and Timothy.

  They had conjured up a Primus stove from somewhere, and on it had managed to bring a large enamel bucket full of water to the boil while the light was being rigged and I, with Herr Wagner watching, checked over the contents of the dead Franzl’s instrument case.

  It held everything I could want, scalpel, knife, dressing and artery forceps, suturing material, cotton-wool galore. All these went into the bucket to boil, while Annalisa and Timothy went off to her wagon for another pan for me to wash in.

  In a quarter of an hour or so all was ready. The light was rigged and steady, the boiling water drained off the sterile instruments, and I had washed up and started work.

  I noticed that Herr Wagner was watching closely. Even if he did not value the horse, he was too good a horseman to hand over the animal to someone and then leave him unsupervised. He said nothing, but washed up himself and then stood near me, obviously constituting himself my assistant.

  I clipped the horse’s leg and cleaned the area with surgical spirit, then reached for the hypodermic. As Herr Wagner put it into my hand, I caught sight of Tim’s face, taut and anxious, watching across the horse’s neck. There was nothing for him to do, so he stood by the animal’s head and spoke to him gently from time to time, but in fact the boy seemed much more disturbed by the operation than the patient, and looked so anxious at the sight of the needle that I gave him a reassuring grin.

  ‘I’m going to give him a local, Tim, don’t worry. He won’t feel a thing, and twenty minutes from now he’ll be doing a capriole.’

  ‘What d’you give him?’

  ‘Procaine. It goes by some German trade name here, but that’s what it is. That’s it between the vaseline and that brown tube labelled “Kol
oston”. I’m going to infiltrate the procaine right round the area. Now watch. You run the needle in under the skin, near the swelling . . . There, he never blinked, and that’s the only prick he’ll feel. Then you put it in again, at the end of the anaesthetised bit . . . see? He doesn’t feel that . . . and run it along the second side of your square. This way, you deaden the whole area. Then the third side . . . and the last. Now, give it time, and when I incise the haematoma he won’t feel a thing.’

  The beam of light shifted, sending the shadows tilting. I glanced up quickly, before I remembered that it was the dwarf Elemer who was holding the wooden batten to which the lamp had been hooked.

  ‘That is better now?’ His deep guttural came from elbow height, and I glanced down, self-conscious now and hating myself for showing it. He was in deep shadow behind the bright bulb, and I couldn’t see the misshapen body or the tiny arms that clutched the batten, but the light reflected on his upturned face, which was the face made familiar by so many of the old tales that take deformity for granted, Snow White, Rumpelstiltskin, and the rest. Only the eyes were unexpected; they were dark, the iris as dark as the pupil, big eyes fringed with thick short lashes; eyes where thoughts could not be read but only guessed at. Not for the first time I reflected that the normal, let alone the privileged, have a burden of guilt laid automatically on them from the cradle.

  I said: ‘Thank you, it’s fine.’ In spite of myself, I spoke just a shade too heartily. I saw him smile, but it was a kind smile. I turned quickly back to the job.

  ‘Scalpel, please,’ I said, and reached out a wet hand. Herr Wagner put the scalpel into it. The beam of light was steady on the haematoma. I bent forward to cut.

  The cut was about four inches long. The swelling cut as cleanly as an orange, and, as cleanly almost as orange juice, the serum flooded out of it and down the horse’s leg, followed sluggishly by the blood, which, in a week, had formed a sizeable, stringy clot. You could almost feel the relief as the thing split and the pressure was lifted. Old Piebald’s ears moved, and Tim whispered something into one of them.