by Fiona Walker
‘I’m afraid you got that one quite wrong,’ he told his wife, stepping forward to dust off her stone and feeling something snap beneath the snow under his foot. He pulled out another dream-catcher.
‘Tread softly because you tread upon my dreams,’ he murmured, shaking the snow off it.
‘Very well quipped!’ chortled a voice, and Kit turned to find the vicar beside him in a coat even more voluminous than his own, witch black with a matching hood. It was like meeting his Maker. ‘Would you care for a cup of tea? I’m just about to put the kettle on in the vestry.’
‘Thank you, but no.’ Kit peered closely at the soft, androgynous face, trying to determine a gender.
‘We do not judge a man on his faith here, just his need for succour,’ the vicar droned. ‘I see you so often and you always look so very troubled. Tell me, was Hermione your wife?’
‘Not when I knew her,’ he said stubbornly. ‘She was Hermia.’
‘And does her passing into God’s arms still vex you?’
‘Well, he dropped the catch the first time,’ he muttered. ‘Now if you’ll excuse me, I have a lot of dreams to catch up on.’
*
‘Come here, old fellow, I won’t ask twice.’
‘Won’t ask three times then.’
‘Come here, boy.’
‘Fifth time and this is final, you bugger.’
‘Twelfth time, you bloody sod. Don’t you dare... Come back here! Beck!’
The stallion, Lester had discovered, was a nightmare to catch.
Lester had been played by enough horses over the years to know all the tricks: darting away at the last minute, shuffling off just out of reach, ducking and spinning when he had his fingertips on the head-collar. Beck had them all in his repertoire, plus an impressive range of bucks, squeals and the I’m-scary rear. Quietly impressed by his athleticism and sheer ingenuity, Lester pretended to find it completely uninteresting.
‘You got bored yet, boy?’
When bribery didn’t work, the bucket rattled for minutes on end in a hopeless battle of wills, he switched to the old faithful waiting game, walking to the middle of the little enclosure and standing with his back to him, playing Grandmother’s Footsteps.
He had all the time in the world.
Beck snorted and circled him, trying to see his face. Lester turned away. The horse drew closer. Lester drew away. Round the paddock they went, the stallion getting ever closer. Lester could feel his breath warm on his back now. Any... second...
With a rev of engine and toot of horn, the post van came up the drive. Beck spun away, shrieking at the top of his voice to let the rival on the other side of the hedge know this was his territory.
‘Blast and botheration!’ Lester gritted his teeth in frustration. His wasn’t a great display of aggression – registering slightly below that of a crown green bowler missing the jack – but it was enough for Beck, who turned his attention back to the tweedy little man who’d outstayed his welcome in his space.
Lester saw the horse’s eyes harden, his ears flatten, his head drop low. A hoof stamped in warning, the nostrils saucered.
He knew he had ten seconds at most. He was right in the middle of the paddock, the rails too far away to outrun a fit horse, especially with his stiff hips. There was an old oak halfway to the gate, a disintegrating spiral staircase wrapped around its trunk leading up to the long-condemned treehouse from which the Captain’s grandchildren had decades ago trained binoculars on the village. It was his only hope.
*
As Kit hung the dream-catchers back on the old beam pegs and herb hooks where his daughter had originally strung them, he wondered if it wasn’t time to rethink the hippie student vibe. His children might not want him to sell the Old Almshouses, but he would probably find it easier to work more sociable hours if it didn’t feel quite so like a Brighton incense store.
A horse whinnied directly outside, so loudly it might have been in the room with him. Going to the window, he saw a woman with her children riding through the snow. Was she mad?
A ghost’s shadow ran through him. Hermia’s voice was in his head again. ‘You worry too much, Kit. I’ll be fine! I’m only going to the farm to use the sand school.’ The last words his wife had spoken to him without a slur or a shake impeding her voice.
He hurried to fetch his coat and pull on the nearest shoes.
*
Lester had been up the tree for twenty minutes and the stallion was showing no sign of losing interest, circling, ear-flattening, warning off the tiger that had dared to come close to his mares. It was snowing on and off. He was extremely cold. At last, help came.
‘Lester!’ He could hear Ronnie running along the drive towards him. ‘Are you all right? Pip spotted you in trouble from the house.’
‘I’ve brought the first-aid kit and a blanket!’ Pip panted along behind her.
‘I’d rather you’d brought a tranquilliser shot and a ladder,’ Lester muttered, as the stallion reared, pawing at the branch he was crouching on, almost catching him and bringing him down.
‘Hurry up!’ he demanded.
Beck threw up his head and sniffed the air, eyes fixing on a distant point. The roar that came out of him was so loud Lester’s tree shook, a large slab of snow falling from a higher branch onto his flat cap.
Far in the distance, they heard a shrill returning call from a mare.
Spinning round, tail pluming up behind, Beck headed for the far boundary, almost seven feet of dense beech with rails to the fore.
‘Sweet Jesus!’ Pip dropped the first-aid kit.
At the gate, Ronnie covered her eyes. ‘There go my magic bloody beans.’
Lester watched, open-jawed, as the stallion propped and jumped so perfectly over the hedge that the topmost twigs barely touched his hoofs.
‘Not just a pretty face,’ he breathed, as he dropped stiffly to the snowy ground and called, ‘You follow on foot – I’ll fetch the quad and catch you up!’
While Ronnie and Pip flew in the horse’s hoof prints along the drive towards the village, Lester limped painfully the other way to fetch the quad-bike and as many lunge ropes as he could find.
*
‘This is just like Frozen!’ Bella said excitedly. ‘Elsa has fled Arendelle and Anna rides into the blizzard on her white horse searching for her! You be Christian, Prudie! Mummy, you can be Sven the reindeer.’
‘The forecasters definitely said it would stop snowing by three,’ Petra complained, as they rode round the village in thick-falling flakes. She was appalled at herself for her irresponsibility, too willing to indulge in childish adventure and eager to escape Gunny to check the latest weather satellite.
‘We’re fine, Mummy. We all have high-vis, flashing lights and reflective stripes. They can see us from space.’ Petra always overdid the Dayglo.
‘Well, if they don’t see us coming, they’ll hear us,’ she pointed out, as the Redhead let out another shriek, no doubt calling for her little tussock chum, who was most put out to be left behind in his stable.
‘People rode out in weather like this all the time in the olden days when you were growing up, didn’t they?’ said Prudie, who had tipped her head back to catch snowflakes on her tongue.
‘I rode in snow,’ Petra conceded. Little legs kicking like billy-oh across the Yorkshire Dales, chasing imaginary Edwardian criminals in cape-shouldered coats and flat caps through Birtwick Park.
A delivery lorry was coming towards them, wipers struggling against fat flakes being blown into them. Petra ushered her children into the gate to the church meadows to let it pass.
Now she couldn’t get the Redhead to go forwards. Stubbornly, the mare planted, then started running backwards.
‘Mum, stop riding like a pleb,’ complained Prudie, who wanted to get back in front of the television.
The more Petra urged the Redhead on, the more she twisted and cow-kicked. She let out another loud whinny, her whole body vibrating like a big bass stereo woofe
r.
Somewhere beyond the Green, a dragon-like bellow replied.
‘Get going, you daft bat!’
The mare sat right down, depositing Petra bottom-first in the snow. Casting her mistress an apologetic look, she charged across the church meadows, squealing and bucking towards the standing stones.
‘I’m fine, no need to panic! Don’t get off,’ Petra assured her daughters.
When she didn’t immediately stand up, Bella looked down at her with big, anxious eyes. ‘Are you really all right, Mummy?’
‘My breeches have split.’
*
It was home time at the village school, the last day of term bringing high spirits and general chaos, children weighed down with cards and artwork grabbing bags for collection, mums huddled in duvet coats and fluffy hats outside, hands in armpits, excitedly anticipating a white Christmas.
Standing to one side, her coat not nearly thick enough, cleaning tabard still beneath it, Carly felt her phone vibrate in her pocket.
It was a picture message from Fitz of the Gunns’ small Shetland pony peering murderously out from a hole he’d just kicked in his stable wall. Nothing stands between a man and the woman he loves, however little he is. Not feeling v. gay today. x PS Dad coming home. Lozzy is history. Happy Christmas.
Smiling, Carly sent a thumbs-up and stuffed her phone back into her pocket.
They could hear hoofs clattering on the tarmac road, faster than the craziest huntsman, far louder than a small Shetland in pursuit of his stablemate. Some of the mums started to panic. Children were grabbed and shielded. A woman screamed.
Then Carly gasped as, white as the snow billowing round it, a horse charged past, mythical in its beauty. The children, some spilling out into the front playground, others with their faces pressed to the windows, started to cheer and shriek.
Grabbing Ellis’s hand, she joined the excited procession of mothers, children and teachers surging out along the pavement to give chase.
Following some distance behind, whinnying furiously, trotting as fast as his short legs would carry him, came a lovelorn and very hairy Shetland.
*
Hurrying along Church Lane, Kit had seen the lorry coming towards him, driving too fast, heard the horse shrieking, the little girls screaming and now, heart in his throat, he saw the woman on the ground in the entrance to the church meadows, her two daughters looking forlornly down at her.
As he dashed to help, thundering hoofs overtook him from behind.
‘Watch out!’ screamed one of the girls.
Kit threw himself into the ditch between the lane and the church meadows’ railings just in time to avoid the big silver horse flattening him as it jinked right to take off over the fence, careering up the rise to the mare waiting there. With a delighted squeal, she twirled round and presented her best De Wallen peepshow at him.
Beck didn’t need asking twice.
*
‘Children, come back here right now!’ instructed the headmistress of the junior school. The little crocodile of under-tens, who had been charging along the pavement to see where the beautiful white horse had galloped to, swiftly about-turned. ‘You don’t learn about this until year six!’
*
‘Are they mating, Mummy?’
Petra struggled upright, only vaguely aware that the Redhead was now partaking in a very public sex act beside the standing stones, far more acutely aware of her bottom hanging out of her split breeches, wet snow in some very uncomfortable places. ‘They’re playing together. Avert your eyes, girls.’
‘Mummy, we’ve seen it all on YouTube,’ said Prudie. ‘We know they’re making babies.’
‘I didn’t mean avert them from the horses.’ She covered her bottom as best she could with one hand, fumbling to unzip her coat with the other so she could to take it off and tie it around her gaping breeches. As she did so, she stood on tiptoe to see through the billowing snow, up across the meadow. ‘Although perhaps you should.’
The full X-rated debauchery of the scene was taking place in full view of the village as a very willing chestnut mare was brutally and eagerly pleasured by her priapic silver suitor after an acquaintance briefer than a window opening. Positively crammed back against the big white chest, head bobbing as though saying, ‘Up a bit, down a bit, that’s the spot!’ the Redhead didn’t seem bothered by the rough treatment.
‘Please don’t stare, girls. You’ll make her self-conscious.’ Even my horse is getting no-strings sex, Petra thought testily. Her zip had got stuck to the lining now.
‘Aren’t you going to rescue her?’ Bella asked in shock.
‘I don’t think that would be very wise.’ Damn the zip! Her backside was absolutely freezing and half the village seemed to be coming out to gawp at the standing-stones action.
Then she felt something being wrapped around her shoulders, a warm, safe hug of a huge, squishy duvet coat.
She turned to find Kit Donne with his oaky hair on end and reading glasses still dangling round his neck.
‘Oh, thank you so much!’ Her cheeks prickled as she knotted its sleeves to stop it blowing away.
He was looking absolutely furious, his big dark eyebrows lowered over yellow flame eyes, newly bearded cheeks slamming with an angry tic, now dressed in nothing but a threadbare shirt, old jeans and odd shoes. ‘What damn fool rides out in—’ Before he could say another word, he let out a surprised ‘Oof!’ as he was head-butted sideways by an indignant, puffed-out Shetland, who then muscled his way in through the gate and roared uphill to break up the lovers.
‘Oh, Christ, he’ll get mullered.’ Petra started to give chase only to find herself hoicked back.
Kit had hold of the red coat by the tail. ‘Do you want to get mullered too? My wife bred ponies. You don’t go up there unless you know what you’re doing.’
‘Nothing stands between a stallion and the thing he wants. He’ll fight to the death to get it,’ said a wise voice, in a creamy Wiltshire accent.
Petra recognised Carly a few yards away, observing the action in the field through a gap in the hedge, small boy at her side.
The stallion, having taken his fill, slid off his conquest and turned to find himself under attack from a small, snow-covered equine tussock.
‘Same goes for Shetlands, Petra muttered nervously.’
They all turned as a quad-bike came snarling at speed along the lane. Pip was bouncing on its front rack, a first-aid kit and blanket on her lap, and Ronnie clung onto its rear with a lunge line. Lester was at the handlebars blinking away the snowflakes.
‘Out of the way. Emergency!’ Pip shrieked, rather unnecessarily, at Bella and Prudie, who had already ridden away from the gateway so Lester could drive into the church meadows.
Letting the quad-bike pass, Petra hurried after it to catch the Redhead.
Beck was looking quite benign, the high ground affording a terrific view of his new prairie, a dominion stretching from Ludd-on-Fosse to the east to Broadbourne to the west, Micklecote to the north and Chipping Hampton to the south. He politely ignored the assault from the wronged little husband who, having reversed in and tried for a few double-barrel misses at the stallion’s legs, had spun around and was now gazing up at him in awe.
Beck lowered his black velvet nose. A hairy orange one lifted to meet it. A moment later, bromance sparked.
The Redhead was bored with them both. Saddle under her belly and reins through her front feet, she trotted back down the slope to her mistress, like a raver after a quick knee-trembler behind a nightclub.
‘Exhibitionist.’ Petra caught and checked her over, immensely relieved that she was safe.
Higher up on the field, a ship’s figurehead on a fast-moving quad-bike, Pip was aware that this drama had commanded a significant crowd of local spectators. This was her moment to be heroic again, she realised, her chance to make up for the night of the hurricane when her pluckiness might have been slightly exaggerated. As they closed in on the action, she eyed the bi
g grey stallion out enjoying his freedom. He was best left to the experts. Her gaze shifted down, her landing spot targeted, her audience expectant.
Eager to impress, she made a flying dismount from the quad-bike. ‘I’ll get the Shetland!’
In the billowing snow, she didn’t spot the three standing stones. Tripping clumsily over the first, she ricocheted off the second and knocked her head on the third, shouting, ‘Ow! That bloody hurt!’ before swooning to the ground.
‘Oh, shit.’ Ronnie hopped off the back of the bike and hurried across to her. ‘Pip, can you hear me?’
Pip groaned and sat up, muttering that at least she had nice knickers on, so Ronnie was fairly confident she’d survive.
Villagers were running up to offer help now. Having charged off to a safe distance, the stallion watched them all, head high, snorting furiously, his diminutive new acquaintance at his knees. Lester was squaring up to them both with a head-collar, looking small and frail.
‘Can someone look after Pip?’ Ronnie called. ‘We need to catch that one before he heads off again.’
A figure stooped down beside her and Kit Donne’s profile drew level, tilting to look at her, the angry eyes generous for once. ‘Leave her with me.’
‘Thanks.’ Ronnie nodded, grateful that he was at least capable of being gallant in a crisis. She leaped up to help Lester.
*
Kit kept an eye on Pip Edwards by the gate while they waited for the ambulance, walking slowly around with her because she said she felt sick if she sat down. As well as her own thick coat and a large checked blanket, somebody had thrown an extra coat over her shoulders to combat the cold. She had her phone out to share events with Facebook friends,
‘Are you sure that’s wise?’ Still dressed in his shirt sleeves, Kit’s teeth were chattering almost too much to speak, but Pip’s calm worried him. He seemed to recall you had to keep people talking after a head injury and make sure they knew who and where they were. ‘Who’s the prime minister?’ he asked now.
‘I know you read the Guardian,’ she said kindly, ‘but I’m really not interested in talking about politics.’ She flicked her screen as her phone bleeped with a fresh notification. ‘Oh, good! Someone’s enquired about the box sets I’m selling on Gumtree.’