John slips quickly back into the yard’s routine. He hears nothing from Chantal. He tries telephoning her one evening, but hangs up when a man’s voice answers.
He feels guilty – this is, after all, what the Bible and the law call adultery. Does he love Chantal? He’s not sure. He loves her body, her sense of humour, her sudden, genuine passion for steeplechasing. But he doesn’t feel that lacerating pull at the heart that he has felt once before in his life. Perhaps that’s a relief.
A week later, still with no contact from Chantal, he meets Robert in the Mitre.
‘Well done. I hear Knocknarea won, and you got snowed in with Chantal Vincent for a night at the Crown. Did anything happen?’
John goes red. ‘What do you mean, anything?’
Robert says nothing, waits until John fills the silence.
‘All right, I have to tell someone. There was only one room, and one bed, and it was wonderful. She’s a lovely woman, but that, it seems, is that. No word for over a week.’
‘Ring her to talk about the horse, you idiot. The Cheltenham plans for Knocknarea. And if that’s all she wants to talk about, that’s up to her.’
‘I suppose you’re right. Look, I could do with another drink. How are the manorial rolls?’
Robert launches into an impenetrable account of the relationship between rising rents, the price of corn and security of tenure in 1300. John is happy to let this flow over and around him.
‘You haven’t listened to a word, have you?’
‘Of course I have. You’re on to something, I can see that.’
‘Ha!’
A day later John takes Robert’s advice and calls. Chantal answers the phone.
‘Knocknarea’s very well after Chepstow; we’d like him to run at Cheltenham,’ says John.
‘That’s good – of course I’d love him to run. Keep me posted on how he gets on. I don’t know whether I’ll have time to watch him on the gallops again.’
‘That’s a pity. Goodbye.’
‘Goodbye.’
John hangs up, a sick feeling in his stomach at the stilted conversation. Why didn’t I say something more, like I miss you, or I must see you again. It was the neutral, almost unfriendly tone in Chantal’s voice that held him back. This, and a real fear of rejection.
You were brave enough at the Crown, he thinks, but perhaps that was the drink talking. He sits there for a few minutes, then gets up to go home, when the phone rings again.
‘John? I’m glad I caught you. It’s Chantal.’
‘I recognized the voice.’
‘Thinking it over, I’m not absolutely certain about Cheltenham. Could I talk it over with you and Tom? Tomorrow afternoon?’
‘Fine. Four-thirty?’
‘Four-thirty it is.’
John is even more confused by this second call. There’s not much to discuss, so why does she want to come over? She was very careful to say she wanted Tom there.
Chantal arrives the following afternoon and John’s heart stirs as she comes into the room. She is wearing a blue and green tweed coat and skirt and a cream polo-necked sweater, completely out of place in the scruffy office and muddy yard, but she carries it off. She’s a beautiful woman, John thinks, as she shakes first Tom’s hand, then his own.
The conversation about Cheltenham is short and straightforward. She wants to be reassured that Knocknarea is up to it, that it’s not too soon after Chepstow, and that he will come to no harm.
‘It’s not too soon; he plainly belongs in that class,’ says Tom. ‘He’s no more likely to get hurt at Cheltenham than at Chepstow. Michael will look after him.’
‘Fine. We’ll run. Can I see him in his box?’
To John’s disappointment, Tom comes too. Knocknarea has his head in his manger when they look at him – after a couple of minutes John says, ‘I’m off home. I’m glad he’ll get a run,’ and shakes Chantal’s hand.
He goes out to his Alvis. Chantal’s Rover is parked next to his car. He thinks for a moment about leaving a note, decides against it and drives slowly home.
Once inside his cottage he lights the fire; Bella jumps into his lap when he sits down. Somebody loves me, he thinks. He gets up to pour himself a drink, and hears a car outside. There is a knock on the door. He opens it and there is Chantal, holding out his blue handkerchief.
‘I forgot to return this; I washed it myself.’
John puts his arms around her as she comes in, his chin on top of her head, and kisses her. He pulls up her skirt and pushes her back onto the kitchen table.
‘Gently,’ Chantal says, but John isn’t gentle.
When he has finished he says, ‘I wanted you badly,’ and Chantal laughs.
‘So did I, but I’m not sure you noticed.’ Then she says, ‘I must get home – but I want to see you again. If we can manage it. And I’m sorry I was so distant. I didn’t know what to do.’
‘You can always come here. No one else does, except me and Bella.’
‘Bella?’
‘She’s my regular girl,’ says John, and quickly adds, ‘my cocker spaniel.’
22
JOHN AND CHANTAL meet in John’s cottage whenever Billy Vincent is away.
‘Billy’s a creature of habit; he’s always in London for meetings on Wednesdays or Thursdays. But I have to be back before the housekeeper comes in from the lodge at eight o’clock.’
‘Won’t she see you coming and going?’
‘I use the back drive. There’s no lodge there. And besides, she likes me, she’s frightened of Billy.’
‘Are you frightened of him? He seems formidable to me.’
‘Formidable is right, partly because he’s rich, used to getting his own way, used to people agreeing with him. If I’d agreed to marry him straightaway he’d soon have lost interest. No, he doesn’t frighten me, but I don’t want him to know about us. I’ve no idea what would happen, and I don’t intend to find out.’
They are sitting over supper in John’s kitchen; John has provided the food, Chantal the wine. It’s her second visit to the cottage; Chantal has brought, along with the wine, a large cardboard box.
‘Open it. It’s a present for you, for us.’
John opens the box; inside is a new HMV gramophone.
‘It’s lovely. But I don’t have any records.’
‘The records are in the car. I’ll show you there’s more to music than the Light Programme.’
Chantal goes out to the car and comes back with the big brass horn that fits onto the turntable and a box of fifty records.
‘All jazz and blues. I fell in love with the blues in Paris – and there’s no point playing a Beethoven symphony when you have to change the record and the needle seven times. Listen to this – it’s Bessie Smith singing “St Louis Blues”.’
Chantal fits a needle carefully onto the arm, winds up the gramophone, and John hears the blues for the first time.
‘It takes you a long way from the English countryside.’
‘I first heard Josephine Baker sing “Bye, Bye, Blackbird” at Blacktop’s in Paris when I was seventeen. This is her singing “Ain’t Misbehavin’”.’
‘I suppose we are,’ says John.
‘We’re giving pleasure to each other, and we’re not hurting anyone.’
‘Not Billy?’
‘Not Billy. Unless he finds out, and he won’t. I’m very careful.’
Chantal changes the record to ‘Tishomingo Blues’, and when it finishes they go upstairs.
‘She always gets up at six to go back to the manor,’ says John to Robert Keen a few weeks later over dinner at the Randolph.
‘What are you grumbling about? You get up then anyhow to see your horses on the gallops. You don’t know how lucky you are. Sex, wine, a musical education. I suppose jazz counts as music, can’t see it myself. And no responsibilities. I’d love to be in your shoes – although she’d have to be out of Christ Church by ten o’clock sharp.’
‘Ten o’clock?’
/> ‘No women in Oxford colleges after ten o’clock. It has been scientifically established that ten o’clock is the moment when undergraduates, and dons for that matter, become unstoppably priapic. How’s my horse?’
Robert’s horse has finished well down the field in two races since his third at Huntingdon.
‘We think he likes heavy going. There’s a little conditions race at Newton Abbot in a couple of weeks that might suit him. If it rains continuously between now and the off.’
‘Excellent.’
Two weeks later they are at Cheltenham to see Knocknarea run in the Champion Novice Chase. John is too busy getting the horse ready to go to Billy Vincent’s box at the top of the grandstand, and the first time he sees Chantal with her husband since they became lovers is in the parade ring. Chantal looks smart, beautiful, distant; Billy has his arm through hers. They shake hands, then John gives Michael Molloy, who doesn’t need them, his riding instructions, and follows the Vincents and Tom O’Brien up to the box to watch the race.
‘It’s soft ground, softer than Chepstow, and this is a stiffer course,’ says John.
‘Four of the sixteen are in with a good chance,’ says Tom.
‘Including my boy?’ asks Chantal.
‘Including your boy. He and Maltese Cross are joint second favourites to Kilreckle, the Irish mare; she’s unbeaten in five starts.’
In spite of the going, the race is run at a fast gallop from the off; there are three early fallers, including the favourite. Two out, Knocknarea and Maltese Cross are together going into the fence. Knocknarea hits the fence hard, somersaults in the air and lies still; Michael Molloy is thrown clear. Chantal cries out and buries her face in Billy Vincent’s shoulder. John runs out of the box, down several flights of stairs and out onto the course to the second last fence.
Michael Molloy is sitting up, his right hand holding the top of his left shoulder.
‘Collarbone,’ says Michael. ‘He slipped on take-off. I think he’s broken his neck.’
Knocknarea is still breathing, surrounded by a little crowd that includes the course vet.
‘He’d be dead already if it was the neck,’ says the vet. ‘We’ll splash him with a couple of buckets of water, see if that brings him round.’
After two or three minutes and the water Knocknarea lifts up his head, tries to rise, falls back.
‘Give him a bit more room and time,’ says John, who holds the horse’s head down. ‘He’s badly winded, but he’ll be all right.’
Five long minutes go by, then with help from half a dozen men Knocknarea struggles to his feet.
‘I’ll take him to the box behind the stand,’ says John, and they walk slowly back, Knocknarea unable to put much weight on his off-fore.
They pass the winner’s enclosure, where Maltese Cross’s connections are still celebrating; their trainer comes over as John walks by. ‘Glad to see he’s up; he’s a good horse. I thought you’d lost him.’
John thanks him and they walk on; Tom is in the box, but there is no sign of the Vincents.
‘She was in a terrible state, she thought they were the both of them killed. Mr Vincent has taken her home. At least Michael’s not badly hurt, and the horse is alive.’
‘Alive, but feel the heat and look at the swelling in his off-fore. We won’t know till morning, but it’s probably a tendon. We may have to fire him and turn him out for a year. Let’s get him home.’
Back at Lambourn, John leads Knocknarea, still stiff and sore after the fall, into his box. Tom O’Brien runs his hand slowly down Knocknarea’s leg.
‘It’s filled up below the knee. Stand the leg in a bucket of cold water for an hour, and again in the morning. He’ll not see the racecourse again this season. Will you call the Vincents?’
John feeds Knocknarea and stays in the box for an hour to make sure that Knocknarea doesn’t kick the bucket over. Then he puts a bandage soaked in cold water around the leg, straps on a leather guard and goes back to the office. He rings Chantal; the phone is answered by Billy.
‘Mr Vincent, the horse is all right. Badly winded, and he took a while to get up. I’m afraid he’s damaged his off-fore, and it’ll be some time before he’s sound again, even if all goes well. Michael Molloy’s fine, apart from a broken collarbone. He’ll be riding again in three weeks.’
‘Thank you. I’ll tell Chantal. She’s very upset; she thought the horse and the jockey were goners, couldn’t bear to stay. She’ll be relieved – she’s gone to bed, taken a sleeping pill.’
John and Chantal don’t meet again for three weeks. And when Chantal next comes to the cottage John feels their relationship has shifted. They were brought together by the win at Chepstow; Knocknarea’s fall at Cheltenham seems to have pushed them apart.
‘We shouldn’t have run him,’ says Chantal. She sounds angry. ‘It was too tough, that race, that course in heavy going.’
‘Listen, he was alongside the winner two out, with plenty in the tank, according to Michael. He slipped on take-off. That can happen over a schooling fence. It was bad luck, and there’s plenty of that in chasing. Knocknarea could have broken a leg, or his neck. You’ve still got a horse, and he should be back for next season.’
‘I suppose you’re right.’
When they meet at the cottage, they have dinner, share a bottle of wine, play some music, go upstairs and make love. They talk, but their worlds of racing and Oxfordshire society are parallel universes, and the early excitement has disappeared.
On one Thursday evening Chantal says, ‘I’ve got a plan for next weekend. Billy’s away in Amsterdam on brewery business, and our housekeeper’s on holiday. Can you get away? I’ll come and collect you on Saturday morning, and you can bring Bella.’
John can get away, and is excited at the thought of a weekend with Chantal.
‘We’re not going very far,’ says Chantal; when they turn in through the gates of the Vincents’ manor house, John is taken aback.
‘Have you forgotten something?’
‘We’ve the house to ourselves for two days. I couldn’t face being Mr and Mrs Robinson in some suspicious hotel, or risk running into anyone we knew. It’s very comfortable here, you’ll see, and at least I know my way around. And you’ve been able to bring Bella.’
The weather is fine, and they go for a long walk after lunch with Bella and Chantal’s lurcher Moss; in the evening they have dinner in a small candlelit dining room looking out over the park, and then move to the panelled library. John hasn’t dined in such splendour since he stayed with his grandfather after Derriquin was burned down.
‘I’ve looked up your grandfather’s house. Middleton Park was designed by James Gandon, painted ceilings by Zuccarelli, famous Italian plasterwork. You’re far more used to big houses than I am. We’re new money in Oxfordshire.’
‘That was a long time ago – I’ve been living above and around the stables ever since. I still worry I smell of horses.’
‘I like the smell of horses. Come upstairs and let me show you.’
Chantal takes him up to the master bedroom, and the large four-poster bed she normally shares with Billy. On the dressing table there is a silver-framed wedding photograph of the Vincents; Chantal turns it face down. She is stimulated by the thought of making love in this bed. John is not.
‘What’s wrong?’
‘I know you’re another man’s wife, but sleeping with you in this bed seems...’
‘Look, he spends most of his time in his dressing room. It’s ages since Billy and I slept together. And a week since you and I made love.’
After ten minutes Chantal says, ‘Perhaps the guest bedroom would work better,’ and they go down the passage to an equally handsome room, but one empty of any traces of Billy Vincent. The guest bedroom doesn’t work any better, and over breakfast the next morning John apologizes.
‘Don’t worry. I understand,’ says Chantal, although it is not clear to John that she does. They are both quiet over breakfast. Chantal has to col
lect Billy Vincent from the airport at lunchtime, and her kiss is perfunctory as she drops John and Bella off at the cottage.
Since leaving Ireland John has kept in touch with Charles Burke, and young Charlie has travelled over with horses and stayed with John in Lambourn. Charles has encouraged John to return in a phone call the previous month.
‘Johnnie Mannion died last week of a heart attack. Big IRA funeral in Glasnevin. There’s no one else who’d be interested in you, and it’s all a lot calmer in Ireland now. Cis and I would love to see you again, and you’ll do a better job if you pick the horses yourself.’
‘You and Charlie have chosen well for this yard. But it’s time I came to see you, time I came back.’
John begins his return journey in Kerry – he has written regularly to Josephine, who is still teaching in Drimnamore. She bursts into tears when he arrives at the front door of her cottage.
‘I thought I’d never see you again; I thought you’d become English, that visiting Kerry and Drimnamore and Derriquin was too painful altogether.’
‘Too painful not to come back, it turned out. But I don’t want to see Derriquin.’
‘It’s still standing, it refuses to fall down. The hotel have built a little golf course in the demesne.’
‘Good luck to them. Is Ambrose still alive?’
‘He is, of course, and he’ll be happy to see you. He knows you’re the big trainer in England. Are you married yet?’
‘I am not. What about you? My mother always had plans.’
‘I’m on my own, happy, still teaching. I’m part of the landscape now. I haven’t been called the Doyle bastard for a long while. And Father Michael, he’s still going strong. He knows I’m not trying to turn his children into Protestants.’
John calls on Ambrose and Father Michael, then visits his mother’s and William McKelvey’s graves, both carefully tended by Josephine. He goes to church on Sunday and is asked to read the lesson.
‘That wouldn’t be right,’ he says to the vicar. ‘I’m visiting, I’m not coming back.’
From Kerry John makes the long journey up and across Ireland to Burke’s Fort, where his memories are equally strong, equally violent. He doesn’t ask Charles about Grania, and avoids the burned-out folly when he goes riding with Charlie, who knows enough to make the detour.
Ashes In the Wind Page 17