by Unknown
‘You bast – oh, shit!’
He was lying face down in the water, motionless.
‘Oh, shit!’ Ellen plunged back in, realising that she must have knocked him out when she kicked him. She turned him over in the water and cupped his chin, towing him to the edge before heaving him out by the arms.
‘Spurs! Spurs – can you hear me?’ she called, hauling him into the recovery position and prising his mouth open to check his airway. It was clear. She reached for his pulse, looking urgently around for help – but Hunter Gardner was not at his lookout for once, and the lane was empty. She could hear children playing in a distant garden and a lawnmower moving further away.
His heart was beating hard and fast.
‘Spurs. Wake up!’ She slapped his cheeks and rubbed his back to encourage him to cough.
That was when she realised he was faking. She’d been through enough life-saving dummy runs to know the difference between practice and the real thing. She’d only done the real thing twice – both times assisting rather than life-saving – but she knew that people on the verge of drowning didn’t open one eye when they thought you weren’t looking.
‘Oh, Spurs, don’t die,’ she begged melodramatically, stroking his forehead. ‘You might be an unmitigated shit with no morals, but I would miss you.’
He started to splutter.
‘That’s it! Live, my darling,’ she encouraged. ‘How else am I going to beat you to a pulp? I can’t do it when you’re dead.’
He spluttered some more, but his eyes stayed shut.
‘Spurs, if you think I’m going to give you the kiss of life, you can lie there faking it as long as you like – this laughing gear is going nowhere near your pond breath.’
He spat out a great shower of water and opened his eyes. ‘Damn.’
‘Feel better?’ she asked sweetly.
‘You really wouldn’t care if I died, would you?’ His silver eyes glittered.
‘Not right now.’
‘I’d have cared if you’d died running down Broken Back Hill like a lunatic with an oversized handkerchief tied to your arse.’
‘Only because you thought you’d get the blame if I did.’
‘True.’
They exchanged a long look of understanding.
‘Don’t ride Dilly’s horse down it.’
‘I wasn’t going to.’ He sat up, shaking his wet hair and spitting out more water. ‘I wouldn’t dream of it.’
‘Fine.’ She squeezed the water from her own hair and pulled at her T-shirt, which was clinging like an Ibiza nightclub competition winner’s. Then she went to switch off the hose, which was dancing like a maddened snake and drenching Hunter’s chicken pen.
Finally, she lay down at a safe distance from Spurs to dry off a little too. However alarming, the dunk had cooled her off. She could hear the storm rumbling in the distance, but overhead the sun still scorched out of big blue gaps in the gathering clouds.
‘We’d feel a lot better if we got it over with, you know,’ he called.
‘Got what over with?’
‘Screwing each other’s brains out.’
She hoped nobody was walking along the lane. That drawling voice carried. ‘Forget it. It’s not going to happen.’
‘Shame.’ He was doing his light, clipped, play voice again. ‘Too soon after Richard?’
‘Yup.’ She closed her eyes, adding silently, and I’ve lost my nerve.
‘Dare you.’
‘It’s your turn to do a dare, not mine.’
‘Name it.’
‘I already have.’
‘Can’t do that one.’
‘Do a circus trick, then,’ she muttered impatiently. ‘Disappear.’
He laughed. ‘On Psychotto?’
‘If you like.’
‘If I do, will you kiss me?’
‘No – but I’ll cook tonight.’
‘Just who’s being dared here?’
As predicted, Dilly turned up at exactly the same time she had the day before. Otto exploded through the gates and almost charged straight into the replanted beds when he spotted the sparkling pond now bobbing with lilies, the little fountain trickling at one end.
Dilly had gone to a great deal of effort with her appearance, her hair braided with ribbons, mascara daubed on her long pale lashes and her pink T-shirt even tighter than the one she’d sported the day before.
Ellen was again acutely aware of her own scruffiness, still dressed in Spurs’ T-shirt and her filthy denim shorts, now dry but smelling distinctly of pond.
‘Wow – you got jumps!’ Dilly shrieked, sending Otto exploding off in the opposite direction. ‘That is so cool.’
Spurs – still bare-chested and every teenage girl’s fantasy horseman – headed across the paddock to slot cups into the uprights he’d carried across earlier. ‘Rory lent them – he says he’ll help you out over the summer.’
‘Really?’ She almost let go of dancing Otto in her excitement. ‘You saw him already?’
‘Yup.’ He hauled a pole into a cup to create an imposing crossbar. ‘Has Otto jumped much?’
‘Well, he jumps out of his skin every time a car passes.’ She giggled.
‘Okay.’ Spurs dropped the cup a few holes. ‘I’ll just pop him over some small stuff to see what sort of shape he makes. Can you two hang around and be jump judges in case we knock everything flying?’
Dilly was already pulling down the stirrups and checking the girth.
‘Sure.’ Ellen glanced at the approaching storm, now darkening the sky by the second. ‘Do you think the weather will put him off?’
‘It’ll rumble for at least two or three more hours before it breaks.’ Spurs looked up too. ‘Seven o’clock – I bet you a fiver. I grew up with the weather here. It’s like everything else in this village. Takes twice as long to happen as anywhere else.’ He gave her a meaningful look and went to mount Otto.
While Spurs worked the horse in, circling at trot and canter and getting him to listen, Ellen and Dilly took up sentry duty by one of the jumps.
‘I wanted to come earlier – but Mum insisted on cooking a fancy lunch.’
Ellen swallowed hard at the thought of cooking and eyed Spurs for signs of circus tricks, but so far he was playing it safe.
‘Godspell’s back again, perching in the corner of the studio like a crow,’ Dilly grumbled. ‘I’m catching a train at six, and I bet she’s still there. Oh, look, Spurs is going for it.’
The moment he saw the jump, Otto thrust his nose into the air and set out at a blind gallop towards it, almost falling over it because he couldn’t see his feet.
‘Whoa – whoa, steady!’ Spurs laughed. ‘Sssh. Take your time, baby.’
Something about the deep, languid, reassuring voice kicked Ellen in the solar plexus. He was right. He did turn her on like mad – even more so when he was sitting on half a ton of overexcited animal. She tried and failed to kick away the image of him sitting on nine stones of overexcited Ellen.
Over they went again, this time a little more slowly, taking a big turn afterwards before coming again with even greater control. Soon Otto was clearing the fence like an old hand, snorting out great excited breaths, joyful expression on his face.
‘It can go up six inches,’ Spurs called out, slowing to a walk. ‘He’s pretty green, but he’s willing.’
Ellen knew how he felt.
‘The thing you have to understand about horses,’ he told Dilly, ‘is that they are fundamentally frightened of everything. That’s their instinct. They are creatures of flight, and millions of years of evolution can’t be changed by a human in a hard hat. So you have to work with them and harness that instinct.’ He looked straight at Ellen. ‘Make them feel they can bloody well fly if they want to.’
Ellen felt a blush threaten to spill on to her already hot cheeks. She had a feeling he wasn’t just talking about horsepower here.
‘But I always think I’m going to fall off,’ Dilly was saying.
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‘If you think that, you probably will,’ he said bluntly, as he set Otto off into a canter again and called over his shoulder, ‘The trick is to get straight back on again.’ A moment later he had kicked out the stirrups and thrown himself out of the saddle.
‘Bloody hell!’ Dilly cried in alarm, as he disappeared from sight behind the snorting roan.
But Spurs had landed on his feet and was running alongside Otto, still holding the reins in one hand and reaching out to grip the pommel with the other. With barely any perceivable effort, he sprang from the ground and landed back on board, steering the horse in a wide circle. ‘See? You just get straight back on.’ They bounded over the jump.
Shrieking with laughter now, Dilly jumped up and down on the spot. ‘Oh, please, do that again!’
He shook his head as they cantered past. ‘I don’t want to give this poor boy too much to think about. Let’s concentrate on chilling him out a bit.’ He cast another long look at Ellen over his shoulder, and his face was a picture of victory.
She couldn’t help smiling back. It looked as though she was cooking supper, after all. Watching the muscles moving along his back, she gripped one of the fence wings and tried to breathe normally.
For half an hour Spurs came at the jumps from different angles and made Ellen and Dilly create different shapes with the poles, until Otto was completely relaxed about what he was doing, his pink ears pricked happily despite the storm rumbling on the horizon. ‘Okay,’ he told Dilly. ‘You have a go now.’
‘Me?’
‘Yes. We’ll take them down again so they’re only small and you can pop over them. Give you some confidence.’
‘I’m not sure.’
‘Go on,’ Ellen urged. ‘You’ll feel great – something to make you smile when the exams are getting you down.’
‘Okay.’ She grinned up at Spurs.
‘Atta girl.’ He kicked out his stirrups. ‘Hold his head a sec, will you? Try not to let him move. There’s something I have to do for Ellen.’
He swung one leg over as though he was going to dismount but then, with both palms down on the saddle, he locked his arms and pulled himself up into a handstand.
‘Bloody hell,’ Dilly gasped.
Otto snorted in alarm and stepped sideways, but to Ellen’s amazement, Spurs kept his balance, moving his palms so that he was walking a circle on his hands, his arms leaping with veins at the effort involved. Finally, he gave Ellen an upside-down wink and flipped elegantly off.
‘That,’ she laughed, ‘was amazing.’
‘I used to do a hell of a lot more – but the animals were trained for years, and they were a bit calmer than our friend here.’ He patted the pink rump.
Dilly was speechless with admiration, Spurs’ antics fuelling her burgeoning crush.
Ellen looked away, angered by her own jealousy.
Flying as high as her heart, Dilly sailed over the jumps on Otto, shrieking and laughing for joy.
‘D’you want a go?’ Spurs asked Ellen, as they watched.
‘Not on your nelly.’
‘I wasn’t offering you a ride on my nelly.’
She cast him a withering look and he grinned. ‘So you liked my tricks?’
‘Two tricks – I’m honoured,’ she conceded a smile.
‘One was for dessert,’ he cocked his head. ‘What did I score? Lobster bisque? Boeuf bourguignonne? Summer pudding to follow?’
‘Sausage casserole.’ She’d seen Richard cook it enough times. ‘Then ice-cream.’
‘My favourites. Shall I dress up?’
‘Oh, do. I always insist upon formal attire.’
‘Do I have to keep my tie on for my massage?’
‘Absolutely. Tied on your nelly.’
‘Do you wear one of those tight white coats with buttons that unpop when you stretch across to massage my shoulders?’ he asked.
‘No, I wear protective headgear and a boiler-suit.’
‘I can’t wait.’ He turned to look at her, the silver eyes full of mischief.
Ellen guessed that, however she played it, tonight would be difficult to control.
He left with Dilly, walking alongside Otto as she hacked him back to his field. Ellen listened to Dilly chattering as they went, trying to persuade Spurs to ride Otto for her during the last few weeks of her school term.
‘It would make all the difference – he’s desperate for exercise. Just a couple of times a week. Mum doesn’t need to know – she never checks him. I’m sure you’ve got some tack that fits at the manor.’
‘I’d be arrested for rustling if she saw me.’
‘Why? Do you have paper pants or something?’
‘Ha-ha.’
Their voices trailed away companionably.
Fanning her T-shirt and leaning against the porch, Ellen tipped her head up to the hot sky and watched a cluster of storm-flies dancing around the white light casing.
‘He’s gorgeous,’ she breathed. ‘Christ, he is so bloody gorgeous.’
Had she been a horse, it would have been time to toss her head, fan out her tail and gallop to the hills.
‘Bugger, bugger, bugger.’ Ellen stood outside the closed village shop. She’d forgotten that Joel and Lily shut at lunchtime on a Sunday, instead of their usual dawn until dusk hours. Without sausages and beans, there wasn’t much of a casserole. She guessed she would have to raid the Goose Cottage freezer.
She went to sit on Bevis’s bench, and did not notice the caterpillars dropping on her. A fine thank you dinner this was going to be, with a storm about to break and only defrosted leftovers to eat. She was desperate for the weather to hold just a couple more hours so that they could spend the evening outside, enjoying the garden they had made over together, away from the clammy intimacy of being alone in a room. Every time she’d been in a room with Spurs – even for just a few minutes – she entered meltdown. The more she thought about the evening ahead, the more nervous she became, like the build-up to a big, bone-breaking wave for which she knew she wasn’t competition-fit.
She walked back to the cottage and took a shower to help herself think, pulling on a slip dress and pinning her hair up to stay cool, then slipped her feet into clogs and clacked downstairs to examine the contents of the freezer.
Two ice trays and the blue cooler bottles from a chill-box greeted her. Jennifer Jamieson had cleared her freezer efficiently, switching it to minimum and keeping it running to stop mould building up. Ellen slammed the door and went to peer into the larder. It was almost empty, apart from her one remaining can of baked beans and some old Kilner jars of rices, pulses and pickles, which were more for ornament than consumption.
The fridge housed nothing more than what was left of the strawberries, and the cheese – both rather battered after being used as missiles. There wasn’t even any bread because Snorkel had stolen it while the pond fight was going on.
‘Bugger.’ Ellen sat down at the kitchen table and bit her knuckles fretfully, wondering if the Duck Upstream did takeouts. Then she remembered the takeaway containers that had greeted her arrival at Goose Cottage.
She looked up at the kitchen clock. If she drove like the clappers, she might just make it.
The Peking Garden in Market Addington was extremely swift in filling two white plastic bags with silver trays and handing them over to Ellen, who bolted next door to the off-licence for beer. But despite her speed Spurs was waiting in the garden when she turned the jeep into the gates, sitting on his favourite bench with his head bowed. Dressed in a crisp white shirt and suede jeans, he looked very different from the scruffy, laughing horseman who had left earlier. Shoulders hunched and one heel tapping impatiently, he looked more like a drug-runner waiting for the drop.
He didn’t look up when Ellen cut the engine. He had a box of matches in his hands, which he was striking randomly.
‘What do you think you’re doing?’ She leaped out in a panic, imagining the tinder-dry thatch going up in a roar of flame and smoke.
‘I thought you’d chickened out.’ He narrowed his eyes as he looked up at her, the cigarette that he had been trying to light dropping from his lips
‘No, I went out for chicken.’ She took a step back, trying to read his expression. Gone was the easy, teasing warmth of earlier. His cheeks were pinched and the silver gaze suspicious.
He looked up as a rumble of thunder boomed through the sky. ‘If it rains, I’ll never get the torches lit.’ He stood up, rattling the matches.
‘What torches?’
‘You said you wanted to eat outside.’ He beckoned her towards the back of the house. ‘We’d better hurry. The storm’s not far off breaking. We can watch it.’ He had arranged the garden torches to form an avenue leading to the rear terrace, and in a circle round it. Only two or three were lit, smoky flames rippling like yellow ensigns. The table and chairs, now washed down and spotless, were arranged under the clematis awning, looking out over the lawn and paddock to the village roofs. More candles – nightlights that he must have brought from the manor – were licking hot little flames in every windblown direction on the walls and railings, and in the centre of the table. It was still far from dusk, but the stormclouds made it dark as an eclipse and the little flames lit up the magical bower.
‘These torches are a bitch to get going.’ Spurs lit his cigarette from one. ‘I was taking a break just now. Didn’t think it was worth it if you really had done a bunk with the sausage casserole.’
Ellen bit an embarrassed smile from her lips. ‘Sorry,’ she turned to him, ‘I thought—’
‘You thought I was going to burn your parents’ cottage down because you’d blown me out?’ he suggested.
She looked away, turning red because, put like that, it sounded very silly indeed. ‘I haven’t blown you out.’
‘No,’ he smiled, ‘and I really don’t huff and puff and blow houses down any more.’ He sounded like a grown-up teasing a child.
And that, Ellen realised, was exactly how she felt – young, vulnerable and scared stiff. However hard she tried to shake them, her nerves were starting to get to her. ‘The wind’s doing a pretty good job of blowing everything down – there are branches all over the lanes,’ she prattled, tying Snorkel’s lunge line to one of the wooden uprights before heading back to the car for the takeout.