Taking Flight

by Sheena Wilkinson

  It’d need to. Seaneen was right about the shit. I’m up to my eyes in it. I’ve been here for two hours and already I’ve seen, shovelled and smelled more horse shit than I knew existed.

  Mucking out is backbreaking. It’s also dead tricky. You have to sort of persuade the stuff onto a fork and make sure you aren’t lifting up half the bed with it. Then you have to make the bed all neat again. I’m sweating like a boxer and my shoulders are killing me. What have I got myself into? This is only shit-shovelling and I can’t even get it right. I straighten up and wipe the sweat out of my eyes. My hands stink of piss and shit. This is only my second bed.

  Jim’s about a hundred but he has six beds finished before I get to my third. He doesn’t say much, but every so often he looks at what I’ve done and gives his verdict. Usually a sniff. The best I get is ‘not bad’.

  It takes most of the morning to get the beds finished. Then Cam gets me stuffing hay nets again. At least I know how to do that. It’s cold in the big, open-sided hayshed and the sweat running down my back chills and dries. Cam takes horses out one at a time and works them in the school. She stands in the middle and they run round her on a rope. I recognise Flight. He dances, lifting his legs high. He looks amazing but a bit mad. When she cracks her whip he shoots his back legs out behind him before going dead fast. His hooves pound the hard sand and his neck arches like a charger. I have to make myself look away and concentrate on my hay nets.

  ‘This one needs more than the odd lunge,’ Cam calls to Jim when she brings Flight in, sweating. ‘If Vicky expects to jump him properly she should be exercising him every day. A lesson a week and a quick lunge when I’ve time – which, let’s face it, isn’t very often at the minute – isn’t enough.’

  ‘More money than sense,’ growls Jim. ‘I could have bought ten horses for what they paid for that.’

  I get on with stuffing the nets. It’s like they’ve forgotten Vicky’s anything to do with me, which suits me.

  ‘Here,’ says Cam. ‘You want to know how to put a rug on?’

  ‘OK.’ I might as well. Even though I am going to walk out of this yard at the end of the week and never see another horse. Vicky probably thinks I can’t do it. Mum doesn’t care. Seaneen thinks it’s just shovelling shit. So I learn how to put a rug on Flight. It’s like putting on a coat with loads of straps. Flight looks bored and stamps his feet a bit, but even when I do up one of the straps wrong Cam’s dead patient. ‘It’s OK,’ she says. ‘Just try again.’

  I don’t have many minutes to stop all day. This place is all go. Horses out to the field. Horses in from the field. Nudge’s owner comes and leads her to the edge of the school to eat grass. She spends ages with Nudge, grooming her and talking to her and hosing her bad leg with cold water. If I had a horse I would do all that.

  Me and Jim eat our lunch in the tack room. That’s where they keep the saddles and that. Colette gave me sandwiches this morning and by the time I get to eat them I’m starving. Normally at this time on a Monday I’d be in Psycho’s class getting the bollocks bored off me.

  ‘You’ll be tired the night,’ says Jim. ‘Weekends are enough for me these days. It’s as much as I can do to see to my own horses. But I wouldn’t see Cam stuck.’

  ‘How long have you worked for her?’ Jim’s easier to talk to than most people.

  He chews a bit of bread. ‘It’d be a right few years now. I worked for her da and then when he was killed and she opened up the yard I just stayed on.’

  ‘Her dad was killed?’

  ‘Oh aye, and her ma. In a car crash. She was only nineteen. She inherited the farm and started up the horses all by herself. There’s not many could do that.’

  ‘No.’ It’s weird to think Cam’s family died the same way my dad did.

  Jim is skinny with tattoos and gaps in his teeth. He wears one of those old-man caps and a waxed jacket that’s so faded you could only guess what colour it started off as. He doesn’t look like a man who would have his own horses. I thought only snobs could afford horses.

  Talking of snobs, after lunch I have to lead this wee kid round on Hero, a tiny pony, while Cam gives him a lesson. He’s so small his legs don’t even reach to the bottom of the saddle, but he has all the gear. Hat and boots and those jodhpur things Vicky has. And a wicked-looking whip. All matching. His mum hangs over the fence watching every move. ‘Oh, well done, Casper, darling!’ Casper! No wonder he’s a prat. When it’s time to get down he doesn’t even pat Hero or anything. Just runs to his mum on his fat legs shrieking, ‘I want a fast pony next time, Mummy. That stupid pony’s too slow.’

  By the time I take Hero to his stable and take off his tack – Cam shows me what to do – it’s getting dark. I stand in the yard with Hero’s saddle over my arm and sense the dim, quiet fields all round. The clean, cold air burns my nostrils. It’s weird to be somewhere without streets and lights and cars. I can’t believe how fast the day’s gone. I’ve mucked out six stables, put on three rugs, filled twelve hay nets, pushed a million wheelbarrows to the muck heap and brought five horses in from the field. That was the best bit, handling the horses. I know some of the names. Flight is my favourite. I sort of wish he wasn’t. Then there’s Nudge, of course, and a hairy black one called Kizzy.

  The last thing I do is make up feeds. Or rather, watch Jim do it. You’d think it’d be easy but it isn’t. The horses all get different stuff: food to make them put on weight, food to make them lose weight, food to make them calm, food to make them lively. Garlic. Herbs. Vitamins. There’s a chart on the wall with it all written down. Jim sends me round the stables with the food. The horses don’t even look at me. They tear straight in and then there’s just the sound of munching. I’m starving too. Lunch feels like ages ago.

  ‘You’d better hurry if you’re going to get that bus,’ Cam says as I’m coming out of Nudge’s stable. It feels like years since I got the bus this morning yet today’s gone a million times faster than a normal day. School gives you too much time to think. As I pick up my bag from the tack room I realise I’m looking forward to tomorrow.

  ‘I’ll take him to the bus stop,’ says Jim. ‘Sure it’s only a minute out of my way and it’s raining again. Come on, son.’

  Jim’s car is this ancient old Land Rover you have to really climb into. It smells of damp and dogs and smoke. He lights a cigarette and turns the key in the ignition. Country and western jangles out. Jim parks the car in a gateway and waits until we see the lights of the bus coming round the corner.

  ‘See you tomorrow,’ he says as I climb down. ‘You done well the day, son,’ he adds. ‘Fair play to you.’

  * * *

  A blonde woman swings her leg over Joy’s saddle and dismounts right beside where I’m filling the hay nets.

  ‘Hello there,’ she says. ‘You’re Declan?’

  I nod. She must be Fiona, Vicky’s da’s wife. I wonder what Vicky’s told her about me. Nothing, or she wouldn’t be so nice. She smiles and says, ‘Getting on OK?’

  ‘I think so.’

  ‘Would you like a ride on Joy? She’s very quiet, and I’ve just had her out for an hour so she’s pretty tired. Why don’t you ride her round the school for ten minutes? You can cool her down for me.’ She has a posh voice but she’s smiley.

  ‘I can’t ride.’ It’s stupid how much I hate admitting this.

  ‘Time you learned.’ She shoves her hat at me.

  I scramble up. Joy’s smaller than Flight and not as bouncy. As we walk across the yard to the school I try to remember the stuff Vicky taught me.

  ‘Hey,’ Fiona says, ‘thought you couldn’t ride?’

  ‘I can’t. This is my second time. Vicky let me have a go on Flight last week.’

  Her blue eyes widen at this. ‘Gosh, you’re privileged! Now, heels down.’

  She stands in the middle of the school and I walk round her. Joy is sort of lollopy. It doesn’t feel as amazing as it did on Flight but I can feel myself relaxing more.

  Cam pauses a
t the gate of the school, a tangle of head-collars in her arms. ‘Hi Fiona! You pinching my new worker?’

  Fiona laughs. ‘You don’t mind?’

  ‘Course not. He deserves it. He’s learned more in three days than most people do in a month.’

  She can’t mean this – I have to ask Jim about a thousand questions an hour – but it’s a nice thing to say.

  ‘Remember you’re staying here until Vicky comes up later,’ Cam reminds me, when the three of us are walking back to the yard with Joy.

  I haven’t forgotten. Hanging round here will be loads better than getting the bus back to Belfast. When I sit down to eat my lunch I see that Colette’s packed twice as much as usual so I can have some later, but I’m so hungry I eat most of the extra sandwiches as well. I go out to put the papers in the bin and Cam says, ‘If you clean all the tack this afternoon – I’ll show you what to do – I’ll give you a lesson at teatime. You can ride Kizzy. Fiona reckons you’re a natural, so let’s see if she’s right.’

  * * *

  I don’t know about being a natural. It doesn’t feel like it when I bounce and bump all over Kizzy’s broad back as Cam stands in the middle of the school hollering, ‘Up down, up down, up down, oh you nearly had it there. OK, bring her back to walk and get your breath back.’

  My legs scream with pain and Kizzy sighs – she’s probably pissed off with me by now. Cam’s trying to teach me that rising trot thing. It looks easy when you see other people do it but getting your own legs to respond to the up and down beat of the horse is a different story. And every time your arse hits the hard leather of the saddle with a bump it wrecks you.

  Thank God Jim’s gone home and there’s no one around. I must look even stupider than I feel. Please don’t let Vicky arrive yet. Every time I hit the saddle I think, that’s it, my legs are going to give up now, they can’t lift me up this time, but every time I grit my teeth and they do.

  ‘Don’t try so hard! Relax and it’ll come!’

  Relax! If I had enough breath I would tell Cam where to go. Then suddenly – I can do it! Not every time, but for about ten strides I get it right. Then bump, bump, bump and yes, I get it again. Up – down – up – down. I laugh. ‘I can do it!’

  Cam laughs too. ‘Well done. OK, walk for a bit and get a rest.’

  ‘No way. I don’t want to forget how to do it.’

  She’s suddenly severe. ‘Declan. When I say walk you walk. And you need to think of your horse. D’you think Kizzy enjoys trotting round in circles non-stop?’

  I slow to a walk. ‘Sorry.’

  ‘Most important thing – always put your horse first. If you want a machine, get a bike.’ But she’s smiling. For half an hour she keeps me working, sometimes walking, sometimes trotting, and every time it gets easier.

  ‘When can I canter?’

  ‘Typical boy. I suppose you think you’ll be jumping round these jumps by the end of the week!’

  When she says ‘the end of the week’ my legs betray me and for a few strides I’m bumping and sliding again like an eejit. Only two more days. Next week it’ll be back to school and this will seem like a dream. A busy, exciting, unreal step sideways from my real life. I know I won’t be jumping by the end of the week. Or any time.

  ‘Well done,’ says Cam. ‘OK, you can put her to bed and get Flight out for Vicky.’

  As I’m tacking up Flight – I can do it properly as long as I concentrate – Cam comes into the stable. ‘Just got a text from Vicky. They’re running a bit late. Can you take him out and warm him up? Just walk him round the school, get him loosened up a bit. I’ve another lesson at eight and if he isn’t loosened up there won’t be time for her to jump him.’

  ‘Me? Take Flight?’

  ‘It’s only to walk him round the school for fifteen minutes. He won’t do anything. Just keep him on a loose rein and be gentle but firm.’

  ‘But –’

  ‘Go on, Declan. I need to go and grab a sandwich. I’ll be right back. I promise you’ll be fine. I wouldn’t let you do it if I didn’t think you were perfectly competent.’

  Riding round the floodlit school on Flight, all my own, is – magic. At first I think he’ll play me up but Cam’s right – he just walks round the school. Beyond the fence everything is dark, but in here is our own lit-up world. Just me and Flight. Our breath snakes into the night like the aftermath of a firework. I reach down and clap his warm neck.

  A brisk thud of riding boot on concrete replaces the muffled skim of Flight’s hoof beats in the sand. I look up to see Vicky pulling up at the gate. ‘Oh!’ she says. ‘I didn’t know that was you.’

  At her words the spell holding me and Flight splinters.

  ‘Yeah. Cam said if he wasn’t warmed up there wouldn’t be enough time for you to jump.’ I try not to sound apologetic – after all Cam did tell me. I bring him to the gate, kick my feet out of the stirrups like she taught me, and try to jump off. I brace my legs for landing, willing them not to buckle like they’ve done the other two times. Not a chance, though: all that trotting has wrecked them and my knees give way before I can stop them. Please let her not have seen. It’s like a test and for some reason I have to pass. She’s been a lot nicer since I gave her that thump on the mouth but as she grabs the reins from me her eyes are cold as pebbles.

  Chapter 20

  VICKY

  ‘Don’t forget I’m out tonight, Vic,’ Mum said, coming into my room with some clean laundry on Thursday afternoon.

  I turned round from my desk. ‘Oh yeah. Poetry reading, isn’t it?’ At least she wasn’t trying to drag me along.

  ‘Yes, I won’t be late. Be –’

  ‘Were you going to say be good?’

  She laughed but kind of seriously. ‘I suppose I’m a bit anxious after Friday. I don’t want to leave you together if there’s a bad atmosphere.’

  ‘There isn’t.’

  ‘Sure?’

  I sighed and clicked the top of my pen. ‘Mum, we might just manage to spend an evening in the same house without violence.’

  ‘Hmm,’ she said, as if she wasn’t so sure. ‘You were very quiet last night. You didn’t fall out again, did you?’

  I sighed. ‘I was just tired after my lesson.’

  ‘Cam said Declan was doing amazingly well,’ Mum went on. ‘She couldn’t believe he’d had nothing to do with horses before. Says he’s a natural.’

  ‘Mum, I need to get this English done.’

  ‘Stop changing the subject, Vic. You don’t … you don’t mind him being at the yard, do you?’

  ‘No.’

  ‘Because it would be very selfish of you.’

  ‘I don’t mind. I’m even letting him come to watch me jump on Saturday.’

  ‘With Rory?’

  ‘Yeah, Fliss and Becca said they would come but they’re not. I think it was just a trick to get Rory along.’

  When she left I doodled in the margin of my Macbeth and when she called me down for tea I still hadn’t finished. I decided to work in the living-room when she went out – see if a change of scene would help me concentrate.

  Declan was there, watching Top Gear. He was just out of the shower. Every day he came home filthy and stinking of horse piss. I never got like that at the yard, but then I only ever rode and went home.

  I pulled books out of my bag and piled them round me on the sofa. ‘Mum hates me doing homework in here,’ I said. ‘She’s got this thing about working in your room, at your desk. Is yours like that?’

  He looked up as if he was surprised to hear me talking to him. ‘Nah,’ he said. ‘She’s not bothered.’

  ‘Lucky you.’ I sighed and started twisting a bit of hair to look for split ends. I really wasn’t in the mood for homework.

  ‘D’you want me to turn the TV off?’ He waved the remote.

  I glanced up from my book. ‘What? Oh no, you’re OK. I quite like background noise. Of course Mum says you can’t concentrate that way. Year Twelve’s crap, isn’t it? We jus
t get all the teachers stressing at us all the time. Are yours like that?’

  He shrugged. I’d thought I was a good shrugger until Declan came to stay.

  I tried to imagine his school. I supposed it must be pretty rough. Maybe they didn’t really bother about exams and things. He certainly never did any homework. Not like Rory: I knew he wanted to go to Cambridge to study medicine like his dad. I wanted to do law like my dad. Maybe that’s what everyone ended up doing. Declan’s dad was killed in a car crash, only there was some mystery about it – like it was a stolen car or something. Because when Gran died I remembered the neighbours whispering at the wake. Poor Kathleen … it was the shock done it … the police at the door … she couldn’t go through it again. Declan must have heard them too.

  I looked at him now, watching Top Gear, his dark hair damp from the shower. It had grown a bit, so he didn’t look quite so much of a wee hard man. I wondered what he would say if I suddenly asked him about Gran. I would kind of like to know what he thought – did he blame himself for Gran’s heart attack? It was the day after he was caught joyriding. Then my tongue slid across the roughness inside my lip, and I knew I would never dare ask.

  I looked down at Macbeth again. ‘Like our English teacher, Mrs Brennan – she gave us a test yesterday and we’ve got these stupid questions to do tonight. Lady Macbeth. She’s sleepwalking. She’s mad as a rat and we’re meant to analyse all this meaningless rambling.’

  ‘It’s not meaningless.’ It took me a second to realise he had spoken. ‘She’s only mad with guilt. And bottling it up. What’s done cannot be undone.’

  I felt my mouth drop open so far that he could probably see the red mark where he thumped me. ‘You do Macbeth?’

  ‘Yeah. Why not? Cause I’m at a thick school?’ His dark eyes narrowed.

  I bit my pencil. ‘No, of course not.’ I bent over the book again, letting a curtain of hair hide my burning face. I tried to think of something to say to change the subject. Because he was right – I never imagined people at that sort of school doing the same as us. Not Shakespeare. I thought of Mum being so desperate for me to be nice to him, so I said, ‘How’s your mum?’ before I realised how that must sound – like, ‘Oh yes, talking of people who are mad as rats, how’s your mum?’