by Fiona Walker
The smile flashed on and off lightning fast, coinciding with a distant rumble of thunder. The silliness had gone, the mood blackening, like the sky. ‘Call me later.’
*
In Le Mill car park, Kit’s son’s motorbike had caught the attention of two waitresses on their after-shift cigarette break, one of them their nail-chewing, tattooed blonde, who smiled and moved away behind the building. She left a trail of caramel-sweet, hand-rolled tobacco fumes that made the first two fingers of Kit’s right hand twitch as he wished his children farewell.
‘Still not smoking?’ asked his son.
‘Twelve months and I’ve only scrounged two,’ he promised, giving them both tight hugs before they started pulling on helmets. ‘Let’s speak before I fly.’
‘We’ll prepare the lecture about age-appropriate behaviour and early nights.’ His daughter grinned, a gentle gibe that gave him a sharp flashback to the previous night.
Waving them off, he wandered down to the millpond to sit on a bench and read Orla’s latest messages, excitement stirring as the door on his other world reopened, not noticing the first bullets of rain piercing the smooth mirror in front of him.
*
Lester knew the colt could feel the storm closing in. He was near to the gate now, pretending to graze but really just looking to his mother for reassurance, every distant rumble making him throw up his head. But when Lester held open the gate, he skipped away, challenging him to a race.
‘Have it your way.’
Lester watched the horsebox making its way back down the drive, the low branches flailing against its shiny alloy Luton. Years ago, Ronnie had nicknamed the stud’s old wooden lorry ‘the Drum’ because she said the sound of the poplars hitting its roof was like sitting inside Keith Moon’s floor tom. Hearing the timpani in Holst’s Jupiter still made Lester think of the Drum, remembering those bangs when they’d set out to competitions. After she’d left, the Captain had insisted the horsebox be parked behind the four-bay barn, unable to bear the sight of it. The Drum had rotted there eventually, until old Norm Turner offered to take it away for parts and scrap.
Through the early eighties, Ronnie Percy became the face of the stud, a fearless and popular young competitor, who held many trophies over her blonde head, the bluest eyes in Gloucestershire always full of laughter, her trademark smile never wavering. The press loved the tiny blonde sylph, in her distinctive royal-blue cross-country colours, who took on the biggest fences, talking to her horses all the way, her husky giggle infectious. Soon finding herself a pin-up in the horse world as well as in the loyal Comptons, whose villagers waved off her horsebox to ever-bigger events, Ronnie flirted her way into more than one close scrape on the notoriously naughty eventing circuit, although the Captain kept her on a very tight leash. He and Lester were a formidable back-up team, and Compton Magna enjoyed a glow of media attention and success not seen since its fifties heyday when Major Frank had welcomed royals to tea.
When the Fosse and Wolds had acquired a dashing new huntsman, Johnny Ledwell, it had been easy to predict that he’d fall in love with Ronnie, just as every red-blooded man did. What had been more of a surprise was the Captain’s active encouragement of the union, taking Lester by shock as it did many others, who saw Ronnie as a girl who had her pick from Mick Jagger to Prince Charles. Johnny was the youngest son of a Worcestershire farming family, with modest prospects on a hunt servant’s income. Yet he rode more beautifully than any man ever had across Fosse country, and hounds sang for him like an operatic choir. Johnny was cool-headed and emotionally aloof, which made him utterly intoxicating to Ronnie. He cared more for his hounds and horses than any human – a trait he shared with Lester – and his ability to school up a rough, newly broken youngster in no time had astonished her. His manners were impeccable, unlike the leering event riders who normally pursued her; he was punctual, courteous, honourable and maddeningly sexy.
They were soon a regular feature riding around the village together – the Captain gave Johnny all the best young stud horses to produce, rather to his daughter’s annoyance – and talk of marriage came almost indecently soon, ameliorated when Johnny came into an unexpected inheritance, a favourite uncle bequeathing him a large chunk of Worcestershire farmland, guaranteeing Ann Percy was onside as eagerly as Mrs Bennet peddling Bingley to Jane. Madly in love and lust, Ronnie had been too caught up in the moment, as so often in life, to stop and think before saying, ‘Yes, please!’ to his old-fashioned proposal.
One or two voices had risen above the chorus of approval to express worry that Ronnie was still far too young, not to mention headstrong and flirtatious, to be tied down by marriage. But Ronnie laughed off the idea. She and Johnny had everything in common and a brilliant future ahead of them.
On a flawless June day, dressed in a huge silk meringue, nineteen-year-old Ronnie had married handsome Johnny Ledwell in her family’s pretty village church, cheered on by two hundred family, friends and villagers, followed down the aisle by a host of little bridesmaids and several beloved dogs. So popular was the match locally that the Compton Magna Parish Magazine brought out a commemorative issue.
The horsebox was turning onto the lane. Lester’s chest burned as though he’d swallowed a Roman candle.
He could see Alice coming towards him up the field track, immediately identifiable despite his cataracts, her hill-climbing stride so like her father Johnny’s. He pressed a checked-cotton shoulder deftly into each eye to mop up any sweat and tears, pulling down his cuffs and standing to attention.
Out of breath by the time she reached him, able only to nod in greeting, she turned to admire the view and wheeze discreetly, reeking of Silk Cut. Alice smoked as heavily as her parents and grandparents had, a rarity now, although she’d long since adopted the furtive modern retreat behind barns and back doors while Johnny and the Captain had lit up anywhere, from horseback to hospital ward.
He bowed his head. ‘It’s a sad day. Your grandfather was a great man. I’m very sorry for you and the family.’
‘Thank you. He was.’ She offered no sympathy in return and he was grateful for it. Plenty of others would soon gush about his long service, loyalty and uncertain future. He had lost his oldest friend. He could cope with that just as long as nobody dared pity him.
‘What are you doing up here?’ she asked, when she’d got her breath back.
‘Foal doesn’t want his mum, just his freedom.’ He pointed out the dun colt showboating gaily around the field again now that he had a new audience. ‘Never known one like it. Can’t catch the bugger.’
‘Why bother?’
‘Most valuable youngster on the yard.’
She watched him frolicking. ‘Gosh, that is nice.’
‘Captain bought this mare straight off the racetrack.’ He patted her chestnut rump fondly. ‘Had to sell that old oil painting of the grey with the gammy leg to pay for her.’
‘He sold the John Wootton?’
‘Never liked the near fore on it. He swore this chap will bring eventing glory back to Compton. Your grandfather’s been waiting thirty years for that.’
‘Too late now,’ she said brusquely. ‘You know he’s left Mummy the stud?’
‘Not my business to ask.’ It never ceased to amaze Lester how quickly the bereaved focused upon the bequeathed.
‘She’ll get rid of you in a heartbeat.’
‘If you say so.’ He put the mare back in the field and saluted the uncatchable colt, a rare defeat, but he couldn’t help admiring the perpetrator.
‘If it’s true Grumps left her everything, we’ll have to contest it,’ she said, as they started back down the track together, Stubbs racing ahead. ‘I’ve just had a long phone chat with the solicitor who is totally onside.’
Lester rarely showed his emotions, but his voice had sharpened steel through it. ‘Bury him first, Alice.’
To his discomfort, she burst into noisy, desperate tears, a grief-stricken child once more. ‘I j-just can’t believe he�
��s g-gone!’
Alice was one of the few women Lester was taller than. He gathered her into an awkward Heimlich manoeuvre hug, their bodies rigid with inhibition. She was Johnny Ledwell’s daughter to the core, the Captain’s steely bad temper worn like Joan of Arc’s armour. Of all the grandchildren, Alice had loved the Captain with the most blinkered, unquestioning loyalty, receiving the least gratitude in return. Tim was his high-flying indulgence, Pax his talented golden girl. Tough, stoic Alice had no such charm but, like her father, she’d stayed as close and fierce as a terrier, and she knew how to drive the fastest, fleetest fox to earth.
‘I will not let her do this!’ she sobbed. ‘She never gave a toss about us and she doesn’t now. I know I can count on your loyalty, Lester. You’re our family friend. She let us all down. She mustn’t be allowed to do it again.’
Lester maintained the awkward hug for far longer than felt comfortable, his hips aching, looking back up the track where, beyond the gate, the dun colt had trotted straight to his mother’s teats for a sly feed, receiving a sharp cow-kick reminder that the milk bar was closed. Moments later they were charging across the field side by side, both racing for fun.
Six decades of stud work had taught him to be wary of mothers who seemed not to care. They were usually the kindest of the lot.
7
When Kit dashed back to his car, rain coming down like a power shower, a large horsebox was parked alongside it.
‘CAUTION HORSES’ warned the familiar lettering on its ramp. He remembered the single-finger salute poking out of the window. Then, letting out a sardonic huff, he felt for his keys, head bowed against the downpour. His fingers plunged straight through the loose seam. This was the jacket with the ripped lining. He’d been losing keys out of the bloody thing all year.
They never fell far. He looked around, finally spotting a glint of fob under the horsebox.
His head cracked against its dripping metal skirting. ‘Shit! Ow!’ He hit out at it angrily and a locker opened, cracking down on his skull with a splash of trapped water.
‘Fuck!’ He tried to stand up, hitting his head again. A saddle landed on him like an attacking stingray. ‘Argh!’ An octopus bridle followed.
‘Mate, what are you doing?’ asked a continuity-announcer deep voice behind him, as Australian as eucalyptus creaking in the storm.
‘Trying to get my bloody keys. Ouch!’ Another saddle crashed down.
Both saddles were deftly lifted. ‘Stop head-butting the bloody tack, mate.’
He tugged at the keyring, a ridiculously OTT thing his daughter had bought him with tragedy and comedy masks dangling from it. ‘They’re stuck under the tyre.’
A large, muscular back in a wet T-shirt blocked his view. ‘Move aside.’
Kit did as instructed.
The man – younger and more sinewy than his voice had suggested – dropped athletically beneath the lorry and dragged the keyring out to hand up to him, its masks depleted and bent. There was no ignition key attached.
‘Thanks, but—’
‘No worries.’ Jumping up, he slammed the locker shut and sauntered off as though the downpour wasn’t happening. He had the sort of enviably wide shoulders that rain ran straight off.
Kit kicked the lorry tyre.
His phone was buzzing madly with an incoming call.
‘Why do you Brits always keep your awards in the john?’ Her voice was languid. ‘I’m lying in your bath playing with your gongs. You’ve got some real big ones, baby.’
Kit wanted to be in his bath very much indeed. Instead he was standing in the rain unable to get into his car.
‘In the interests of fairness, I’m going to show you my Oscar,’ she drawled. ‘Coming atcha. Look.’
An MSM buzzed through: a selfie of a small scar on her forehead. Knocked out by a Kansas twister.
Water splashed on the screen. Kit held the phone to his ear again. ‘I love your Oz scar.’ He laughed. ‘And I can’t wait to see your Tony.’
‘Toe knee! I get it. Hang on, I’ll take a shot.’
It hadn’t been meant as a joke, but her joie de vivre was infectious.
‘What I really want is a Kit in my pussy,’ her voice growled. ‘Come back, baby. I’m bored. D’you know what a triceratops is?’
‘A three-horned herbivorous dinosaur.’
‘Yeah.’ She giggled. ‘I’m doing things with three Oliviers that should never be allowed. I’ll send you a Snapchat.’
‘Three, you say?’ He closed his eyes, his parallel lives colliding.
‘Man, you are so talented. Look at these puppies. You even won a Best Actress!’ The line went quiet. ‘Holy shit.’ There was a whooshing, splashing sound as she got out of the bath. ‘Ohmygod, I’m so, so sorry! Medea. My heroine. She was your wife! The one that died!’
‘That one, yes.’ As if there had ever been another
‘I feel so bad.’ She started sobbing, sounding terribly young. ‘You should have fucking said.’
‘It never really worked as a chat-up line.’
‘Now I feel worse!’
‘Please don’t,’ he urged, suspecting she didn’t feel as bad as he did right now, the door between his parallel lives swinging on its hinges as the heavens opened. ‘Don’t go away. I’ll be back as soon as I can,’ he promised, his phone triple-bleeping to warn that its battery was a screen swipe away from dying. His charger was in the car. His way back to Orla was in his car. Rain was lashing down.
*
The Le Mill receptionist cast his eye down the register on his screen. ‘Nothing obvious, sir.’
‘How many clients do you have who arrive in a horsebox?’
‘You’d be surprised. The Tindalls are regulars.’
‘May I see?’
He turned the screen a fraction.
‘Mr and Mrs Blenheim-Badminton in the Hopsack Suite?’
‘I can make a discreet enquiry.’
A small, disgruntled blonde was summoned, braless in a T-shirt and jeans, Medusa snakes of wet hair, half red half blonde. She cast Kit a cursory glance.
‘You’ll need a coat,’ he told her.
‘No point if I’m getting straight back into the shower you just interrupted.’
Outside the rain had let up, but the sky was blacker than ever.
He followed her to the car park – God, she walked fast – noticing that she was still wearing the hotel’s free white slippers.
She clambered into the cab, starting the engine. Then, to his surprise, she jumped back out, screwdriver in hand.
‘Aren’t you going to move it?’
‘The air brakes need to come up to pressure.’
Thunder ripped through the sky, chased by a shard of lightning. Kit flattened himself against the side of the box. She didn’t flinch, marching round to the tack locker that had fallen open on his head earlier and fiddling with its locking mechanism.
Kit, who took an academic approach to changing a lightbulb let alone anything involving tools, had grudgingly to admire her resourcefulness. She was typical of older, well-bred horsy women, whom he encountered mercifully rarely: tough and wiry with a leathered face, small marathon-runner body, the ludicrous punky half-red hair probably a second-wind rebellion.
‘Are you local?’ he asked, to pass the time.
‘That’s up for debate.’ She gave a gruff little laugh, opening and shutting the locker a few times. ‘You?’
‘Nebulous.’
‘Aren’t we all? You can dream in England but your digital memory’s in a cloud in South America.’ Satisfied the lock was fixed, she turned to look at him properly, eyes extraordinarily blue. ‘To think we used to pull back the tracing paper on each page of a photograph album as if it was a sacred veil.’
Not so horse-mad and narrow-minded, maybe.
The locker fell open behind her. ‘Blast!’
‘My parents had a mountain of albums.’ He watched her jabbing the screwdriver into the lock, now less convinced she was a master
engineer. ‘After they died, we went through them to share out the memories. In over three thousand photographs Dad took of holidays, his family featured in less than fifty. The rest were all bloody landscapes.’
That gruff laugh again, and a nod of recognition. ‘My darling dad photographed horses. The people on them were incidental. He died today.’ She attached the last three words so casually he almost missed it.
‘I’m sorry.’
‘Forget I said it.’ She tested the locker, this time tightly closed. ‘Trying not to think about it. Easier to talk about the weather.’ Another lightning strike forked out uncomfortably close. She looked up. ‘Cloudless.’
Kit ducked low as thunder bellowed.
‘Are you okay? You’re shaking.’
‘Not fond of storms.’
‘Shelter in the cab while I move this if you like.’ She hauled open the passenger door, releasing a Pandora’s box of old familiar smells – wet dogs, cigarettes, coffee and, above all, horse.
‘Thanks, I’m fine.’
She shrugged, banging it shut. ‘Not fond of horseboxes either?’
‘You got it. You made me late for lunch earlier.’
She looked at his car. ‘You’re the prat who overtook me on Fosse Hill.’
‘I was late for lunch with my kids. It was their mother’s birthday.’
‘That’s no excuse. I’m sure your wife doesn’t want to be made a widow on her birthday.’
‘Her husband’s already her widower.’
‘Then don’t make your kids orphans.’ She didn’t miss a beat for compassion, pocketing her screwdriver. ‘Drive better next time. You almost killed us both.’
‘I wouldn’t have dreamed of overtaking if you hadn’t been going so slowly. Surely the point of these things is that they should travel marginally faster than the horses they’re transporting.’
To his surprise, she let out brief, husky laugh. ‘If my box offends you, I suggest you need to think outside it.’ The red dye in her hair was coming out, he realised, pink water streaming down her T-shirt, like blood.
‘Have we met?’