by Dick Francis
His voice was calm and so was Ginnie’s manner, and I guessed that they still hadn’t told Nigel about the deformities. There was hope, too, in their faces, as if they were sure that this one, after all, would be perfect.
‘She’s coming,’ Nigel said quietly. ‘Here we go.’
The mare gave a grunt and her swelling sides heaved. The rest of us stood silent, watching, taking no part. A glistening half-transparent membrane with a hoof showing within it appeared, followed by the long slim shape of the head, followed very rapidly by the whole foal, flopping out onto the straw, steaming, the membrane breaking open, the fresh air reaching the head, new life beginning with the first fluttering gasp of the lungs.
Amazing, I thought.
‘Is he all right?’ Oliver said, bending down, the anxiety raw, unstifled.
‘Sure,’ Nigel said. ‘Fine little colt. Just his foreleg’s doubled over…’
He knelt beside the foal who was already making the first feeble efforts to move his head, and he stretched out both hands gently to free the bent leg fully from the membrane, and to straighten it. He picked it up… and froze.
We could all see.
The leg wasn’t bent. It ended in a stump at the knee. No cannon bone, no fetlock, no hoof.
Ginnie beside me gave a choking sob and turned abruptly towards the open door, towards the dark. She took one rocky pace and then another, and then was running: running nowhere, running away from the present, the future, the unimaginable. From the hopeless little creature on the straw.
I went after her, listening to her footsteps, hearing them on gravel and then losing them, guessing she had reached the grass. I went more slowly in her wake down the path to the breeding pen, not seeing her, but sure she was out somewhere in the paths round the paddocks. With eyes slowly acclimatising I went that way and found her not far off, on her knees beside one of the posts, sobbing with the deep sound of a wholly adult desperation.
‘Ginnie,’ I said.
She stood up as if to turn to me was natural and clung to me fiercely, her body shaking from the sobs, her face pressed hard against my shoulder, my arms tightly round her. We stood like that until the paroxysm passed; until, dragging a handkerchief from her jeans, she could speak.
‘It’s one thing knowing it in theory,’ she said, her voice full of tears and her body still shaking spasmodically from after-sobs. ‘I read those letters. I did know. But seeing it… that’s different.’
‘Yes,’ I said.
‘And it means…’ She took gulps of air, trying hard for control. ‘It means, doesn’t it, that we’ll lose our farm. Lose everything?’
‘I don’t know yet. Too soon to say that.’
‘Poor Dad.’ The tears were sliding slowly down her cheeks, but like harmless rain after a hurricane. ‘I don’t see how we can bear it.’
‘Don’t despair yet. If there’s a way to save you, we’ll find it.’
‘Do you mean… your bank?’
‘I mean everybody.’
She wiped her eyes and blew her nose, and finally moved away a pace, out of my arms, strong enough to leave shelter. We went slowly back to the foaling yard and found nobody there except horses. I undid the closed top half of Plus Factor’s box and looked inside; looked at the mare standing there patiently without her foal and wondered if she felt any fretting sense of loss.
‘Dad and Nigel have taken him, haven’t they?’ Ginnie said.
‘Yes.’
She nodded, accepting that bit easily. Death to her was part of life, as to every child brought up close to animals. I closed Plus Factor’s door and Ginnie and I went back to the house while the sky lightened in the east to the new day, Sunday.
The work of the place went on.
Oliver telephoned to various owners of the mares who had come to the other three stallions, reporting the birth of foals alive and well and one dead before foaling, very sorry. His voice sounded strong, civilised, controlled, the competent captain at the helm, and one could almost see the steel creeping back, hour by hour, into his battered spirit. I admired him for it; and I would fight to give him time, I thought, to come to some compromise to avert permanent ruin.
Ginnie, showered, breakfasted, tidy in sweater and shirt, went off to spend the morning at the Watcherleys’ and came back smiling; the resilience of youth.
‘Both of those mares are better from their infections,’ she reported, ‘and Maggie says she’s heard Calder Jackson’s not doing so well lately, his yard’s half empty. Cheers Maggie up no end, she says.’
For the Watcherleys too, I thought briefly, the fall of Oliver’s business could mean a return to rust and weeds, but I said, ‘Not enough sick horses just now, perhaps.’
‘Not enough sick horses with rich owners, Maggie says.’
In the afternoon Ginnie slept on the sofa looking very childlike and peaceful, and only with the awakening did the night’s pain roll back.
‘Oh dear…’ The slow tears came. ‘I was dreaming it was all right. That that foal was a dream, only a dream…’
‘You and your father,’ I said. ‘Are brave people.’
She sniffed a little, pressing against her nose with the back of her hand. ‘Do you mean,’ she said slowly, ‘that whatever happens, we musn’t be defeated?’
‘Mm.’
She looked at me, and after a while nodded. ‘If we have to, we’ll start again. We’ll work. He did it all before, you know.’
‘You both have the skills,’ I said.
‘I’m glad you came.’ She brushed the drying tears from her cheeks. ‘God knows what it would have been like without you.’
I went with her out into the yards for evening stables, where the muck-carrying and feeding went on as always. Ginnie fetched the usual pocketful of carrots from the feed room and gave them here and there to the mares, talking cheerfully to the lads while they bent to their chores. No one, watching and listening, could ever have imagined that she feared the sky was falling.
‘Evening, Chris, how’s her hoof today?’
‘Hi, Danny. Did you bring this one in this morning?’
‘Hello, Pete. She looks as if she’ll foal any day now.’
‘Evening, Shane. How’s she doing?’
‘Hi, Sammy, is she eating now OK?’
The lads answered her much as they spoke to Oliver himself, straightforwardly and with respect, and in most cases without stopping what they were doing. I looked back as we left the first big yard for the second, and for a moment took one of the lads to be Ricky Barnet.
‘Who’s that?’ I said to Ginnie.
She followed my gaze to where the lad walked across to the yard tap, swinging an empty bucket with one hand and eating an apple with the other.
‘Shane. Why?’
‘He reminded me of someone I knew.’
She shrugged. ‘He’s all right. They all are, when Nigel’s looking, which he doesn’t do often enough.’
‘He works all night,’ I said mildly.
‘I suppose so.’
The mares in the second yard had mostly given birth already and Ginnie that evening had special eyes for the foals. The lads hadn’t yet reached those boxes and Ginnie didn’t go in to any of them, warning me that mares with young foals could be protective and snappy.
‘You never know if they’ll bite or kick you. Dad doesn’t like me going in with them alone.’ She smiled. ‘He still thinks I’m a baby.’
We went on to the foaling yard, where a lad greeted as Dave was installing a heavy slow-walking mare into one of the boxes.
‘Nigel says she’ll foal tonight,’ he told Ginnie.
‘He’s usually right.’
We went on past the breeding pen and came to the stallions, where Larry and Ron were washing down Diarist (who appeared to have been working) in the centre of the yard, using a lot of water, energy and oaths.
‘Mind his feet,’ Larry said. ‘He’s in one of his moods.’
Ginnie gave carrots to Parakeet and R
otaboy, and we came finally to Sandcastle. He looked as great, as charismatic as ever, but Ginnie gave him his tit-bit with her own lips compressed.
‘He can’t help it all, I suppose,’ she said sighing. ‘But I do wish he’d never won any races.
‘Or that we’d let him die that day on the main road?’
‘Oh no!’ She was shocked. ‘We couldn’t have done that, even if we’d known…’
Dear girl, I thought; many people would personally have mown him down with a truck.
We went back to the house via the paddocks, where she fondled any heads that came to the railings and parted with the last of the crunchy orange goodies. ‘I can’t believe that this will all end,’ she said, looking over the horse-dotted acres, ‘I just can’t believe it.’
I tentatively suggested to both her and Oliver that they might prefer it if I went home that evening, but they both declared themselves against.
‘Not yet,’ Ginnie said anxiously and Oliver nodded forcefully. ‘Please do stay, Tim, if you can.’
I nodded, and rang the Michaels’, and this time got Judith.
‘Do let me speak to her,’ Ginnie said, taking the receiver out of my hand. ‘I do so want to.’
And I, I thought wryly, I too want so much to talk to her, to hear her voice, to renew my own soul through her: I’m no one’s universal pillar of strength, I need my comfort too.
I had my crumbs, after Ginnie. Ordinary words, all else implied; as always.
‘Take care of yourself,’ she said finally.
‘You, too,’ I said.
‘Yes.’ The word was a sigh, faint and receding, as if she’d said it with the receiver already away from her mouth. There was the click of disconnection, and Oliver was announcing briskly that it was time for whisky, time for supper; time for anything perhaps but thinking.
Ginnie decided that she felt too restless after supper to go to bed early, and would go for a walk instead.
‘Do you want me to come?’ I said.
‘No. I’m all right. I just thought I’d go out. Look at the stars.’ She kissed her father’s forehead, pulling on a thick cardigan for warmth. ‘I won’t go off the farm. You’ll probably find me in the foal yard, if you want me.’
He nodded to her fondly but absentmindedly, and with a small wave to me she went away. Oliver asked me gloomily, as if he’d been waiting for us to be alone, how soon I thought the bank would decide on his fate, and we talked in snatches about his daunting prospects, an hour or two sliding by on possibilities.
Shortly before ten, when we had probably twice repeated all there was to say, there came a heavy hammering on the back door.
‘Whoever’s that?’ Oliver frowned, rose to his feet and went to find out.
I didn’t hear the opening words, but only the goose-pimpling urgency in the rising voice.
‘She’s where?’ Oliver said loudly, plainly, in alarm. ‘Where?’
I went quickly into the hallway. One of the lads stood in the open doorway, panting for breath, wide-eyed and looking very scared.
Oliver glanced at me over his shoulder, already on the move.
‘He says Ginnie’s lying on the ground unconscious.’
The lad turned and ran off, with Oliver following and myself close behind: and the lad’s breathlessness, I soon found, was owing to Ginnie’s being on the far side of the farm, away down beyond Nigel’s bungalow and the lads’ hostel, right down on the far drive, near the gate to the lower road.
We arrived there still running, the lad now doubling over in his fight for breath, and found Ginnie lying on her side on the hard asphalt surface with another of the lads on his knees beside her, dim figures in weak moonlight, blurred outlines of shadow.
Oliver and I too knelt there and Oliver was saying to the lads, ‘What happened, what happened? Did she fall?’
‘We just found her,’ the kneeling lad said. ‘We were on our way back from the pub. She’s coming round, though, sir, she’s been saying things.’
Ginnie in fact moved slightly, and said ‘Dad.’
‘Yes, Ginnie, I’m here.’ He picked up her hand and patted it. ‘We’ll soon get you right.’ There was relief in his voice, but short-lived.
‘Dad,’ Ginnie said, mumbling. ‘Dad.’
‘Yes, I’m here.’
‘Dad…’
‘She isn’t hearing you,’ I said worriedly.
He turned his head to me, his eyes liquid in the dark of his face. ‘Get an ambulance. There’s a telephone in Nigel’s house. Tell him to get an ambulance here quickly. I don’t think we’ll move her…. Get an ambulance.’
I stood up to go on the errand but the breathless lad said, ‘Nigel’s out. I tried there. There’s no one. It’s all locked.’
‘I’ll go back to the house.’
I ran as fast on the way back and had to fight to control my own gulping breaths there to make my words intelligible. ‘Tell them to take the lower road from the village… the smaller right fork… where the road divides. Nearly a mile from there… wide metal farm gate, on the left.’
‘Understood,’ a man said impersonally. ‘They’ll be on their way.’
I fetched the padded quilt off my bed and ran back across the farm and found everything much as I’d left it. ‘They’re coming,’ I said. ‘How is she?’
Oliver tucked the quilt round his daughter as best he could. ‘She keeps saying things. Just sounds, not words.’
‘Da—’ Ginnie said.
Her eyelids trembled and slightly opened.
‘Ginnie,’ Oliver said urgently. ‘This is Dad.’
Her lips moved in a mumbling unformed murmur. The eyes looked at nothing, unfocussed, the gleam just reflected moonlight, not an awakening.
‘Oh God,’ Oliver said. ‘What’s happened to her? What can have happened?’
The two lads stood there, awkward and silent, not knowing the answer.
‘Go and open the gate,’ Oliver told them. ‘Stand on the road. Signal to the ambulance when it comes.’
They went as if relieved; and the ambulance did come, lights flashing, with two brisk men in uniform who lifted Ginnie without much disturbing her onto a stretcher. Oliver asked them to wait while he fetched the Land Rover from Nigel’s garage, and in a short time the ambulance set off to the hospital with Oliver and me following.
‘Lucky you had the key,’ I said, indicating it in the ignition. Just something to say: anything.
‘We always keep it in that tin on the shelf.’
The tin said ‘Blackcurrant Coughdrops. Take as Required.’
Oliver drove automatically, following the rear lights ahead. ‘Why don’t they go faster?’ he said, though their speed was quite normal.
‘Don’t want to jolt her, perhaps.’
‘Do you think it’s a stroke?’ he said.
‘She’s too young.’
‘No. I had a cousin… an aneurysm burst when he was sixteen.’
I glanced at his face: lined, grim, intent on the road.
The journey seemed endless, but ended at a huge bright hospital in a sprawling town. The men in uniform opened the rear doors of the ambulance while Oliver parked the Land Rover and we followed them into the brightly lit emergency reception area, seeing them wheel Ginnie into a curtained cubicle, watching them come out again with their stretcher, thanking them as they left.
A nurse told us to sit on some nearby chairs while she fetched a doctor. The place was empty, quiet, all readiness but no bustle. Ten o’clock on Sunday night.
A doctor came in a white coat, stethoscope dangling. An Indian, young, black-haired, rubbing his eyes with forefinger and thumb. He went behind the curtains with the nurse and for about a minute Oliver clasped and unclasped his fingers, unable to contain his anxiety.
The doctor’s voice reached us clearly, the Indian accent making no difference.
‘They shouldn’t have brought her here,’ he said. ‘She’s dead.’
Oliver was on his feet, bounding across the
shining floor, pulling back the curtains with a frantic sweep of the arm.
‘She’s not dead. She was talking. Moving. She’s not dead.’
In dread I followed him. She couldn’t be dead, not like that, not so fast, not without the hospital fighting long to save her. She couldn’t be.
The doctor straightened up from bending over her, withdrawing his hand from under Ginnie’s head, looking at us across the small space.
‘She’s my daughter,’ Oliver said. ‘She’s not dead.’
A sort of weary compassion drooped in the doctor’s shoulders. ‘I am sorry,’ he said. ‘Very sorry. She is gone.’
‘No!’ The word burst out of Oliver in an agony. ‘You’re wrong. Get someone else.’
The nurse made a shocked gesture but the young doctor said gently, ‘There is no pulse. No heartbeat. No contraction of the pupils. She has been gone for perhaps ten minutes, perhaps twenty. I could get someone else, but there is nothing to be done.’
‘But why?’ Oliver said. ‘She was talking.’
The dark doctor looked down to where Ginnie was lying on her back, eyes closed, brown hair falling about her head, face very pale. Her jerseys had both been unbuttoned for the stethoscope, the white bra showing, and the nurse had also undone the waistband of the skirt, pulling it loose. Ginnie looked very young, very defenceless, lying there so quiet and still, and I stood numbly, not believing it, unable, like Oliver, to accept such a monstrous change.
‘Her skull is fractured,’ the doctor said. ‘If she was talking, she died on the way here, in the ambulance. With head injuries it can be like that. I am sorry.’
There was a sound of an ambulance’s siren wailing outside, and sudden noise and rushing people by the doors where we had come in, voices raised in a jumble of instructions.
‘Traffic accident,’ someone shouted, and the doctor’s eyes moved beyond us to the new need, to the future, not the past.
‘I must go,’ he said, and the nurse, nodding, handed me a flat white plastic bottle which she had been holding.
‘You may as well take this,’ she said. ‘It was tucked into the waistband of her skirt, against the stomach.’
She made as if to cover Ginnie with a sheet, but Oliver stopped her.