Star Dancer

by Morgan Llywelyn

  In the morning, Suzanne’s parents came to the stables to see how Dancer was. Mr O’Gorman was dressed for work, and was soon back in his car and driving in to the city. But Suzanne’s mother lingered in the stables awhile, looking into the boxes at the various horses and ponies. There was a wistful expression on her face.

  ‘You should come down and ride with your daughter sometimes,’ Anne Fitzpatrick suggested. ‘I’m sure we could find a horse you’d enjoy.’

  Suzanne’s mother shook her head. ‘I don’t ride any more,’ she said sharply. She turned and left the stables. Over her shoulder she called back, ‘Come up to the house now, Suzanne, and eat something and change your clothes.’

  Suzanne went home for a while to please her mother, but she was soon back at the stables. She could not ride Dancer for several days, until the vet examined him again and pronounced him well. But she wanted to be with him.

  Ger did not show up that day. Brendan was really annoyed. ‘The lad’s left me short-handed,’ he complained.

  When she went home for her lunch Suzanne asked her mother if she could help Mr Walsh by grooming some of the horses. Mrs O’Gorman tightened her lips. ‘You know I don’t like you working around strange horses, Suzanne. We know Dancer’s gentle, but we can’t be sure of the others.’

  For once, Suzanne lost patience with her mother. ‘Mr Walsh wouldn’t let me groom a horse that couldn’t be trusted! You can’t keep me wrapped in cotton wool all the time.’

  She ran out of the room. She ran all the way to the stables. Opening the door to Dancer’s box, she went inside and put her arms around his neck. She whispered to him so no one else could hear, ‘I have to be let grow up, Dancer. Mum wants to keep me a baby. But I’m not a baby. I’m not! She just doesn’t understand.’

  Dancer understood. Dancer always understood.

  Ger didn’t come to the stables the next day, either. By now, Brendan Walsh was angry. ‘I’ll fire that little gurrier when I see him,’ he threatened. ‘If he’s sick, he could at least have rung me to let me know.’

  Suzanne was worried about Ger. ‘Why don’t you ring him, Mr Walsh?’

  ‘I don’t have his phone number. I asked him to write it in the book in the tackroom, but when I went to look for it yesterday, there was no number there. Irresponsible, that’s what he is. Completely irresponsible. I should’ve known it from the first, Suzanne. I’d say we’re well rid of him.’

  But Suzanne knew Ger wasn’t irresponsible. He had worked harder than anyone to learn about horses and take good care of them, and until Dancer got colic he had never missed a day. No one could have been a better worker.

  Something was very wrong.

  ‘I should go to him and tell him I don’t blame him,’ Suzanne told Dancer. ‘But how can I find him? I looked in the telephone book, but there are so many Caseys. And I don’t even know the name of the road he lives on. Oh Dancer, why didn’t I find out more about him?’

  But Ger hadn’t told anyone very much about himself. At least, not very much of the truth.

  Suzanne grew increasingly more worried.

  She was right to worry. Ger was having problems of his own.

  On the day Dancer got colic, Ger reached home late. He had missed the last bus. To get into town and across Dublin to the flat, he used a combination of walking and hitching. When he arrived home he was exhausted, as well as miserably unhappy. Not only had he nearly killed Dancer, but he felt certain he would never be welcome at the stables again.

  ‘I don’t belong there,’ he tried to tell himself. ‘I was a right eejit to think I could.’

  But in his heart he knew there was no other place he wanted to be.

  For once his mother was sober, and waiting up for him. She asked a lot of questions about where he’d been.

  ‘I don’t want to see you turning out like Donal, out ‘till all hours and sometimes not coming home at all,’ she said. ‘If that goes on you’ll join your da inside someday. God between us and all harm, I try to do me best for you lads, but you just …’

  ‘I’ve been working, Mam,’ Ger interrupted. ‘I have a job. I mean … I had a job. Until today. I don’t think they want me any more now.’

  ‘A job? You?’ Mrs Casey looked at her youngest son in astonishment. ‘What kind of a job?’

  ‘Doesn’t matter.’ Ger gave a weary sigh and dug into his pocket, intending to give his mother the money there. Then he remembered he had used it to buy ice cream for Dancer. But the rest of his earnings, most of it, was safely hidden away in an envelope under his mattress. He’d thought about giving it to his mother to buy groceries, then decided against it. She might spend it on drink.

  Now he needed to show her the money to prove he’d had a job. He got the envelope and brought it to her, though he only wanted to crawl into bed and pull the covers over his head.

  Mrs Casey took the notes out of the envelope and counted them. Then she looked suspiciously at Ger. ‘Did you nick these?’

  ‘No!’ he exploded. ‘Didn’t I tell you I had a job?’

  ‘How could a young one your age earn this much money honestly?’

  Ger gave his mother a bitter look. ‘I had friends. Friends who wanted to help me. And I did earn it honestly, every pound. That’s where I’ve been every day, working. Hard work it was too, I’ll tell you.’

  ‘Doing what?’ She still didn’t believe him, he could tell.

  ‘Mucking out stables,’ Ger replied. ‘Do you know what that’s like? You clean out loose boxes and carry baskets full of wet, heavy horse dung. You curry horses and take them buckets full of clean water and you sweep the yard and clean the saddles and … aww, what’s the use. It’s over now. I lost the job.’ Ger’s shoulders sagged with weariness. ‘I’m going to bed,’ he said, leaving his mother staring after him with the money still in her hand.

  ‘Ger?’ she called. ‘Ger?’

  But he didn’t answer. He crawled into his bed and the world went away.

  Sometime later Donal came home, and Mrs Casey showed him the money. ‘Ger says he had a job at some sort of farm or something,’ she said.

  Donal smiled with only one side of his mouth. ‘And you believed him? He robbed it, more like. Sneaky kid. Here, give us some, I’ll be needing some smokes tomorrow.’

  By the time Ger dragged himself out of bed the next morning his money was gone. Neither Donal nor his mother was in the flat.

  ‘Damn it!’ he exclaimed. ‘I should never’ve told her about the money!’

  But it was too late.

  It was too late for everything. The silence in the flat was deafening. Ger made himself a cup of tea and ate a slice of bread – there was no jam – then went outside and sat on the step with his head in his hands, trying not to think about anything.

  ‘Hey, Ger!’

  It was Anto’s voice. Ger looked up. Anto, Danny and Rags were coming towards him. Rags was carrying a newspaper.

  ‘Hey, Ger!’ he called. ‘Did you know you’re famous?’

  11 – Back to the Gang

  IT WAS THERE IN THE MORNING PAPER, the photograph taken at the gymkhana with himself and Suzanne and Star Dancer. And their names, and the name of the stables. All of it.

  The gang crowded around Ger, asking questions.

  ‘Would ye’s get lost. I don’t want to talk about it,’ he told them, but it was no use and he knew it. They wouldn’t leave him alone.

  ‘Why didn’t you tell us about this, hey?’ Anto kept asking. ‘All those posh fellas at the stables, I’ll bet they’re loaded. You must know some rich people. Why didn’t you take us to meet them? Is this that one you were with at the RDS? Did you ride that horse? Hey, Ger, when can we go riding, eh? When? You holding out on us?’

  ‘Listen, it’s not like you think,’ Ger said. ‘I had a job, that’s all. At the stables. I couldn’t invite you out there to go riding. I was just working there.’

  ‘Yeah?’

  ‘Yeah.’

  ‘And what else?’


  ‘What d’you mean?’

  ‘You know what I mean,’ Anto said accusingly. ‘What else were you doing in a place like that? All those rich people. Bet ye picked up a few things, stuck ‘em in your pocket, eh? Stuff they’d never miss.’ He grinned and dug his elbow into Ger’s side.

  Ger drew back. ‘I did not.’

  The grin grew broader. ‘Sure you did. What did you get? You going to share it with your pals? I knew we should’ve followed him,’ he said to the others. ‘We should’ve got in on this. Listen here to me, Ger. They need any more lads at that place? Good strong lads, like?’ Anto’s grin had become very crafty.

  Ger could feel himself getting angry. ‘Look it, I don’t work there any more!’ he said loudly. ‘I can’t take you there, so forget it.’

  ‘What d’you mean, you don’t work there any more? Did they catch you lifting stuff?’ Anto sounded envious, as if he admired Ger for stealing.

  ‘They didn’t …’ Ger hesitated. ‘I mean …’ He looked at their eager faces. They wanted him to be a hero, a thief.

  They were his friends, these lads. His only friends. Suzanne wouldn’t want to have anything to do with him any more. Star Dancer probably wouldn’t forgive him either. Horses had good memories. Dancer probably knew Ger had made him sick.

  The stables and the life there was a lost world.

  Ger looked again at the faces clustered around him. He took a deep breath and said mysteriously, ‘Maybe. Maybe not.’

  ‘He did!’ Danny crowed. ‘He took stuff and got caught! But he got away! You got away, didn’t you, Ger?’ He sounded admiring, impressed.

  Ger gave an elaborate shrug. ‘Maybe.’

  ‘Will they be after you?’

  ‘They don’t know where to find me,’ Ger replied. ‘I never told them where I live.’

  ‘You’re dead cute,’ Anto said approvingly. ‘Nobody ever catches Ger Casey.’

  ‘Nobody,’ Ger agreed. They were taking him back, accepting him as their leader again. He was welcome back into their circle because they thought he’d done something dangerous and illegal and clever. ‘I made a fair few quid out of it,’ he said casually, letting them think he had stolen the money.

  ‘Yeah? How much?’

  ‘A bit.’ He folded his arms to let them know he wasn’t telling.

  They nudged each other. They were very impressed.

  But then Anto said, ‘What about the spying? You made all that up, then?’

  ‘Maybe.’

  ‘And maybe not,’ Danny decided.

  They wanted to believe. They wanted to be impressed. Seeing the picture in the paper had done it. Now they thought he was really special.

  I could’ve been, Ger said to himself, remembering what it felt like to ride a horse. I could’ve been. Maybe. But I ruined it.

  He hated himself. But the gang would never know. They were looking at him hopefully, expecting him to come up with some exciting idea for a way to spend the day. He made himself jump to his feet. ‘Let’s go,’ he said abruptly. ‘Let’s go and do something.’ He set off down the street at a run. The sound of their footsteps behind him told him they were following him once more.

  As the days passed and there was no sign of Ger, Suzanne grew more and more worried. She tried to tell herself she was being foolish. Ger was tough and smart, she knew that much. He could take care of himself. He’d probably just got tired of the hard work and scarpered.

  But she didn’t really believe that. Ger had loved Dancer, and he hadn’t minded the hard work. He had been proud of what he was accomplishing, and he had been devoted to his riding lessons.

  She couldn’t believe he had just thrown it all away.

  When she tried to express her worries to Brendan Walsh, the stable manager shrugged them off. ‘He’s no good, that one,’ he said. ‘I’d forget about him if I was you. There are a thousand more where he came from. We were all wrong about him, Suzanne, so just let it go at that.’

  But she couldn’t. There was a stubborn streak in Suzanne O’Gorman.

  Besides, she had another reason for wanting to find Ger. When Star Dancer had been over his colic for a week, Anne decided it was safe to start jumping him again, very easily and carefully at first.

  And Suzanne realised Ger had taken the magic stone away with him in his pocket. It was gone with him wherever he was gone.

  ‘I don’t think we should begin jumping Dancer again yet,’ Suzanne told Anne. ‘He might have a relapse.’

  ‘Nonsense. The vet said he could go back to normal exercise as long as we don’t overdo it. And that junior event is coming up faster than you realise, Suzanne. You need to practise. I’m not worried so much about the dressage phase, but the two of you have a lot of work to do over fences if you’re going to be ready.’

  ‘I know, but …’

  ‘No buts about it,’ Anne said briskly. ‘I’ll let you wait one more day if you like, but after that we start back with the cavaletti work and then with the fences.’

  That night Suzanne tried frantically to recall anything Ger might have told her about where he lived. But there was nothing. She picked at her dinner. Then she went to her room and sat on the edge of her bed, staring moodily at the horse pictures on the walls without really seeing them. The newest one was a clipping from the newspaper, with the photograph taken the day Dancer got colic at the gymkhana.

  Suddenly Suzanne’s eyes opened wide. She got up and went to peer more closely at the newspaper article. Of course! The man who took notes had asked all sorts of questions, including their addresses.

  There it was, in fine print in the caption below the picture: Suzanne O’Gorman, daughter of Declan and Phyllis O’Gorman of Stepaside, with her horse Star Dancer, who is kept at High Hill Stables. Also shown is Ger Casey of Morton’s Court, Dublin.

  Suzanne ran to the sittingroom where she found her mum reading a magazine and her dad watching the telly.

  ‘Daddy, where’s Morton’s Court?’ she asked excitedly.

  Without looking up from her reading, her mother said, ‘Don’t bother your father, Suzanne. You know he likes to see the nine o’clock news.’

  ‘But this is important!’

  Mr O’Gorman half turned in his chair to look at her. ‘Morton’s Court, did you say? I don’t think I … ah sure, aren’t those the old council flats on the way to the electricity works, out towards Irishtown and Ringsend somewhere?’

  ‘How far are they from the RDS?’ Suzanne wanted to know.

  ‘A couple of miles at least, I’d say.’

  ‘But a person could walk from Morton’s Court to the RDS?’

  ‘They could, of course. Why, Suzanne?’

  ‘Morton’s Court is where Ger Casey lives.’

  Mrs O’Gorman put down her magazine. ‘In those old council flats? But they’re practically derelict, some of them! Didn’t I read in the papers not long ago that they were due to be demolished?’

  ‘I need to go over there, Daddy,’ Suzanne said earnestly. ‘I need to find Ger.’

  ‘That’s on the other side of the city, Suzanne. What’s so urgent about it? Why do you think you have to go all the way over there to find the lad?’

  ‘Because he hasn’t come to work at the stables for days and I’m worried about him. He might be sick or something.’

  ‘Did Brendan Walsh ring him?’

  ‘Ger didn’t leave a phone number, and we couldn’t find one through Directory Enquiries because we didn’t know what name the phone is listed under.’

  Mr O’Gorman shot a quick glance at the news, then looked back to his daughter. ‘I think it’s best you let the stable manager sort out his own employee problems, Suzanne.’

  ‘But … it might be my fault Ger isn’t coming to work. He might think I’m mad at him. But I’m not. Not any more. And I need to tell him.’

  Mr O’Gorman switched off the telly. ‘I think you’d better explain the whole thing to us, my girl,’ he said firmly.

  Suzanne obeyed. She felt l
ike she was betraying Ger when she told how he had given the ice cream to Star Dancer, but she wouldn’t lie to her parents. She just didn’t bother to mention the magic stone. It would sound silly, she realised. Silly kid’s stuff. Parents got old and forgot there was such a thing as magic.

  When she had finished explaining, it was Mrs O’Gorman, surprisingly, who said, ‘Suzanne’s right. I think that boy should be found and told he has nothing to worry about. Anyone can make a mistake. There’s so much to learn about horses and he’s only been around them a short time. I think he’s done brilliantly, really.’

  Suzanne’s face lit up. ‘Oh, thanks a million, Mum!’

  ‘Declan,’ Mrs O’Gorman went on, ‘you said you’d some messages to do tomorrow out in Clontarf?’

  ‘I need to see a magazine distributor out there.’

  ‘Then why not take Suzanne with you, and on the way back the two of you can see if you can find Ger.’

  The next morning, after Mr O’Gorman had finished his business in Clontarf, he drove Suzanne into an area of Dublin she did not know.

  This was an old part of town. Amid rows of grimy terraced houses, a few cottages were bright with window boxes, but for the most part the area looked poor. There were some boarded-up shops and a lot of young lads just hanging around, smoking cigarettes and watching passing traffic with bored expressions.

  But none of them was Ger Casey.

  Mr O’Gorman took a map from the glove compartment and looked at it for a long time, then drove on. ‘There’s Morton’s Court, through there,’ he said suddenly, pointing as he braked.

  Up a narrow laneway, Suzanne glimpsed a multi-storeyed grey building with broken windows and limp laundry strung across littered balconies. There were no flower boxes here, just an air of neglect and decay, as if no one cared.

  ‘Oh Ger,’ Suzanne murmured. She remembered how lovingly the boy had swept the tackroom and polished the saddles and bridles until they gleamed.