by Fiona Walker
Occasionally he stayed at his father’s farm, which grew damper and more dilapidated in tandem with his father’s descent into drinking and gambling. More often, Rory was despatched to stay with friends or other members of the family, such as Aunt Isabel ‘Hell’s Bells’ Belling and her son Jasper.
Spurs remembered Rory as a tough, awkward little boy who wet the bed, broke toys and struggled academically, yet who lit up with such talent when he rode that he found salvation in the saddle, becoming a Pony Club favourite, adored by mothers and daughters alike. In horses, he seemed to find the love he so craved at home. Rory barely appeared on Truffle’s radar unless her ex-husband’s school-fees cheque bounced again; Diana ran away from home when he was just eight; and James Midwinter loved scotch more than his son. But horses never let him down.
Not long after Rory’s tenth birthday his father drowned in the bath after a protracted drinking session. He was forty-one. It was a dishonourable departure for a man who had once been so fêted. Rory, white-faced and silent, had not cried at the funeral. Afterwards his aunts patted him on the back and said, ‘Well done, jolly brave’, as though he’d just successfully completed his Pony Club B Test.
The majority of the Midwinter farm was sold to pay off debts, except Horseshoe Farm Cottage and its stables, where Rory’s Great Uncle Gerald, known to all as Captain Midwinter, had taught small children to ride for as long as anyone could remember, with military ferocity, a long leather-clad cane clamped under his arm at all times and a voice incongrously like Noël Coward addressing a dim-witted chorus line. The captain was a stickler for manners and went to bed at eight o’clock each evening, but had a good heart beneath the bluster and nurtured his nephew’s riding talent. He had once famously ridden around Badminton on three horses in the same day, a feat Rory dreamed of matching. Horseshoe Cottage became Rory’s spiritual home in his later teens, and his uncle was the force behind him joining a point-to-point yard as a sixteen-year-old apprentice instead of struggling on at school as his mother wanted.
When the Captain suffered a fatal stroke at home in bed after a long day’s hunting, Rory had inherited the run-down riding school. Still in his early twenties and forging a good career as an amateur jockey, he’d returned to the Lodes Valley to rechristen the yard Overlodes Equestrian Centre and take up event riding, which had always been his greatest ambition. Since then, he’d slipped into a lot of bad habits, many of which were inherited.
Spurs had watched with concern as his cousin grew more lackadaisical, and increasingly like his father whose life had been such a tragic waste. Tonight, he was showing a little more Midwinter fighting spirit at last, and Spurs was delighted.
‘You are wising up, Rory,’ he told him.
‘Meanwhile everyone around me is dumbing down.’
‘You sound like the Captain.’
‘Do I?’ He laughed. ‘Christ, I’m turning into a grumpy old bachelor. Uncle Gerald was probably a closet gay, I think. I remember all the Pony Club mums hanging round him eagerly, batting their eyelashes. Why do women do that with camp men? Is it the unattainable thing?’
Spurs shrugged. ‘A bit of femininity makes them feel safe, I guess.’
‘Faith’s like that with Lemon – and you should see him. He looks like an Oompa-Loompa, but the girls are all over him. No matter how well I ride, how hard I work, Faith is more impressed by his bad jokes than anything I can do. I might as well not be there.’
‘Maybe she’s trying to make you notice her?’
‘Say again? By ignoring me?’
‘It’s what you do with horses, don’t you? “Join-Up”. You chase the buggers around hassling them until they’re fed up and exhausted, then you ignore them and they come and stand by you and follow you anywhere.’
Rory laughed, ‘So you think Faith’s trying Join-Up with me?’
‘You’re pretty tough to break in,’ Spurs pointed out. ‘All those bad habits from years of having it all your own way.’
Rory’s phone beeped again. This time the colour drained rapidly away. ‘Fuck. Faith’s lost Beccy and Lemon’s passed out cold. She needs help.’
He leaped up, throwing a wad of cash on the table.
Spurs leaned back and smiled up at him, hands aloft. ‘I rest my case.’
Rory was too flustered to listen. ‘Great to see you. Love to Ellen. See you in the New Year.’
‘Aren’t you home for Christmas?’
‘To drink dry Martinis at teatime and share my mother’s spare bedroom with that china doll that looks like Myra Hindley? Not if I can help it.’
Waving him off, Spurs hardly blamed his cousin for wanting to stay away from his immediate family. Widowed twice and divorced twice, Truffle now lived alone in her chocolate-box Georgian townhouse and was never short of dinner dates, most recently enjoying a very flirtatious liaison with retired Danish bookseller Ingmar Olensen. At one point it was rumoured within the family that the pair had secretly married, but Truffle wasn’t letting on and Ingmar had already forgotten. She remained a contrary character and spared her son little affection. Both Truffle and Diana had let Rory down badly over the years, breaking promises, abandoning him, pursuing their own goals at the expense of his, yet he never seemed to blame them, he simply retreated into his own world, trusting horses more than people.
It often worried Spurs that Rory was sitting on such a well of unspoken anger. He feared that he would self-destruct like his father unless he dealt with it soon.
The two boys Beccy had picked up in Rumorz were kind souls really, barely out of their teens and good Catholic lads fresh from Ireland offering a pretty girl a lift home. Still high on her e, Beccy was giving out strong come-hither signals. Lady Gaga on the car stereo made her squirm and giggle. She was a wreck, but she was blonde and buxom with a twinkle in her eye – and she had her own little flat above a stable yard in one of the classiest villages on the downs, compared to the lads’ static caravan. They thought Christmas had come early when she asked them in for a drink.
‘You sure?’ asked the younger lad as they climbed out of the car, music still blaring from the stereo. Two huge dogs were bearing down on them.
Beccy giggled, whistling the dogs away and then wrapping her arms around him. ‘Sure I’m sure.’ She kissed him, her nerve endings still tingling, grateful to be home and feeling fabulously serene once more.
‘Hey, don’t leave me out of this,’ heckled the other one.
Beccy found herself in a jockey sandwich beside the car, dancing to the music. One of them was sucking and licking her neck while the other fumbled in her bra – or was that the same one? A hand was between her legs. They both smelled of perspiration and cheap aftershave. She started to feel slightly less serene.
‘Um … actually … I think I might just …’ She struggled to break free and found that one boob was bobbing about outside her plunge-neck top.
Suddenly the yard floodlights came on, illuminating the threesome like escaping prisoners making a dash across the exercise yard.
‘What in hell do you think you’re playing at?’ a voice boomed from the shadows beneath the arch.
The lads were back in their car and driving away in less than a minute. Beccy quailed as Hugo strode across the yard towards her, but he marched straight past to close the gates and watch the tail lights retreat along the driveway.
Realising her tit was still hanging out, she hastily tucked it back in and shivered.
The rain had lifted at last and left a skin-biting freshness just off a frost and a lowering mist that floated down around them like gossamer.
Hugo turned back to her, rubbing his hair wearily. ‘Look, I have no problem with you bringing boyfriends back here,’ he said, sounding almost apologetic. ‘But I would request that you take them one at a time, otherwise it frightens the horses.’
‘I am twenty-seven!’ she blustered, feeling the last of her ecstasy high and the Libido-ration opportunity abandon her. She was massively relieved that the lads had gone, b
ut she wasn’t about to let Hugo know that.
‘With respect, Beccy,’ Hugo’s voice was cool and dispassionate, ‘you have purple dreadlocks and believe in reincarnation. Your taste in men is up for debate.’
‘Don’t you like my dreadlocks?’
‘I dread Loughs,’ he said idly.
‘Eh?’ She was still quite stoned.
‘Nothing.’ He shook his head, starting to walk away. ‘Frankly, I don’t like them, no, but my opinion hardly counts.’
‘It’s my life!’ she shouted after him, absurdly hurt.
He held up his hands. ‘Your life.’ He marched back under the archway to the second stable yard, killing the lights as he passed. ‘Go to bed. I just thank God I have at least a decade before I go through this with Cora.’
Beccy breathed in and out three, four times, realising that, suddenly, her opportunity was so golden again it was radiating light above her head a thousand million watts brighter than the yard light.
‘What if you’re dead by the time Cora grows up?’ she screamed after him. ‘My father was!’
He stopped in his tracks. She knew that he didn’t want to hear this, but now that he had he was honour-bound to react.
He was beside a stable that had its internal light on, glowing in true nativity fashion, golden beams catching the natural blond streaks in his hair and the plumes of condensing breath coming from his mouth. For the first time, it occurred to Beccy to wonder why he was out here on his own so late, but she was on too much of a mission to ask.
Making her way beneath the arch, she shuffled alongside him and looked over the stable door, almost blinded by the sense of him against her side, the warmth of his body and his smell. He was everything she had dreamed about for years, and he was here.
He reached up and turned off the light, heightening her sense of nearness even further.
‘Why d’you think I ran away and kept on running?’ she asked him in a breathless whisper, desperate to keep him there.
‘You don’t have to say any more.’ He put a warm, strong hand on her back and Beccy felt as though she was sprouting angel wings.
‘I want to say more! I want you to understand!’
He rubbed her shoulders distractedly, much as he would comfort one of the dogs, but a divine warmth unfolded those angel wings. ‘You must talk to Tash about this, Beccy. She’s better than me on this sort of stuff.’
Beccy’s eyes narrowed. ‘I don’t think so.’
‘She’s there for you.’
Beccy said nothing, staring into the gloomy stable ahead of them and realising for the first time that there was a horse in there, lying quietly in one corner. It looked dead.
‘Almost lost her foal,’ he whispered. ‘The vet had just left when you got back.’
It took her a while to register that the horse was the broodmare Dove.
‘What—’
‘Placentitis. I spotted her running milk at night-check. She’s full of anti-inflammatories and antibiotics now, but it will be touch and go.’
‘She might die?’ Beccy wailed, but Hugo covered her mouth quickly with his hand as the horses around them kicked and snorted, coming to their doors to see what the noise was about. His fingers smelled of hay, of horse, of cigarettes and of cologne.
Beccy held his hand tight to her mouth and kissed it with all her love.
‘Stop that.’ Hugo’s fingers slid away.
She looked at the mare through her tears.
‘Don’t tell Tash about this just yet.’
For a ludicrous, heart-leaping moment, Beccy thought he meant about her kissing his hand, but then sense prevailed.
‘This will be Snob’s last foal, yes?’
‘If it survives.’ He nodded, unlit cigarette dangling between his lips.
She felt tears flooding her eyes, scoured with her own self-pity as she tried and failed to blink them away. ‘I was in prison when he died, you know.’
‘Bad luck.’
Beccy felt a rip of anger in her chest. Hugo could be so damnably upper class.
He regarded her for a moment, the pathetic figure hunched over the stable door in her party clothes, big blue eyes glistening with tears.
‘Time to go to bed.’ He plucked the unlit cigarette out of his mouth and stepped forward to peck her on the cheek.
Beccy had had few moments of perfect timing in her life, but this was one rare opening. She turned her head at exactly the right moment, her lips parted and she felt Hugo’s brusque, muscular kiss land on her tender, open mouth like a bee diving into nectar.
Before he could register what was happening, Hugo felt the most delightful of touches on his lips, a soft, sweet draw that took him wholly by surprise.
‘Happy Christmas!’ Beccy pulled away and skipped off to her quarters.
Chapter 37
By the time Rory arrived in Marlbury, feeling like a superhero to the rescue, his heroism was no longer fully required. Beccy had texted Faith announcing that she was safe and at home, and Lemon had been discovered in the loos at Rumourz. A bouncer had extracted him from his foetal position on the floor of a cubicle and carried him outside.
Rory spotted them shivering on the steps of a nearby warehouse. Lemon had his head between his knees. Beside him, all Rory could make out of Faith was those endless legs clad in disturbingly tight leather jeans with killer heels. He suddenly felt unaccountable nervous. Then she stood up and he realised that she looked quite normal from the waist up, swathed in tatty layers, her hair pulled back from her scrubbed face. There was something different about her shape, too. Rory thought he hadn’t seen her look this pretty for weeks. But, as usual, she was first on the attack.
‘You took your time. He won’t stand up and I can’t get him to the car park,’ she announced through chattering teeth. Then she hastily zipped up her bodywarmer and crossed her arms in front of her chest, hurriedly turning away from him.
‘Here – you’re cold.’ He uncurled his scarf and wrapped it round her neck, breathing deeply. She smelled glorious, a heady combination of horses and expensive scent. ‘I like your perfume.’
Not looking at him, Faith ducked away and nodded at Lemon. ‘Let’s get him back.’
Hauling the drunken and stoned little Kiwi over his shoulder in a fireman’s lift, Rory carried him to the car park, ignoring the groaning protests that he wanted to be left to die with his Faith intact. Whether he meant his religion or his friend was uncertain.
Soon Faith was joining in the protest.
‘Not my car!’ She barred the passenger’s door of her little yellow VW, arms still crossed in front of her and her eyes darting from Rory to the seat inside.
‘Why not?’
‘You’re going straight back to Haydown, so you can take him. Besides, my interior’s just been valeted. Yours is a tip.’
‘So you’re saying it doesn’t matter if Lemon throws up all over my car?’
‘Basically.’
Rory looked at her over Lem’s thigh, trying not to notice the long curves of her body silhouetted by the tungsten light behind her. ‘I cut short a dinner date to rescue you.’
The whites of Faith’s eyes flashed in the dark. ‘I’d do the same for you. That’s what mates are for.’
Rory was at a disadvantage. He had a small, moaning man thrown over one shoulder and a heart burning like a furnace. ‘I’ll hold you to that some time.’
‘You do.’ She nodded and dived into her car, so anxious to take something from the passenger seat and thrust it into the glove compartment that she ripped her waistcoat. Rory watched her anxiously, hoping it wasn’t drugs. All he could glimpse were two shiny bags the same size and colour as the ones in the cop shows containing large quantities of heroin or some such narcotic.
Just as she was about to slam the driver’s door he called ‘Hang on!’
In the dark, her eyes glittered.
‘Have you ever done “Join-Up”?’
Medieval Christmas vespers were booming fro
m her car stereo and she leaned forwards to lower the volume. ‘Depends if you’re talking handwriting, thinking or training.’
He stared at her in confusion, shrugging Lemon higher up his shoulder as he started to slip. ‘Horses.’
‘Mum always uses Join-Up – she went to California and trained with Monty Roberts long before it was fashionable,’ she told him, glancing at him and then quickly away again. ‘You look like a cowboy standing there, a bounty hunter with Lem your fugitive.’
‘Call me Butch Cassidy,’ he swaggered.
‘He was one of the outlaws,’ she smiled, reaching for the door handle. ‘Text me when Lem’s tucked up safely in bed.’ The door slammed.
On Rory’s shoulder, Lemon lifted his head groggily and muttered into his ear, ‘Face it mate, she’s way too clever for you.’
The little car engine sparked and Rory stepped back, waving Faith off like a stiff-spined army officer, before manhandling Lemon into his own car and driving him back to Haydown.
Increasingly lucid now, but still intoxicated, Lemon rambled about Faith on the journey home. ‘She’d never be happy with a stupid man. She’s such a smart cookie.’
‘She was dumb enough to go under the knife to get laid,’ Rory muttered.
‘So she can fake big tits, but you’ll never fake any brains, yeah? She has twice your fucking heart. She’s a good kid. You need to leave her alone.’