Grounded

by Wilkinson, Sheena;

  ‘Excellent, excellent. Now, how would you feel about Germany?’

  ‘Germany?’

  ‘Hans-Peter Hilgenberg’s yard. You know him?’

  ‘I saw him at the Dublin Show last year.’

  ‘He’s looking for a groom. We’ve sent students to him before, and his yard manager, Anneliese, has emailed to ask if I would recommend someone. They like Irish grooms. Wasn’t sure you’d want to go so far from home but –’

  ‘Yes.’

  Mullan laughs. ‘I haven’t given you any details yet.’

  It’s a job. It’s in another country. And Hans-Peter Hilgenberg is an international showjumper. What more do I need to know? An image of Seaneen flashes into my head but I blot it out.

  ‘When can I start?’

  ‘Now look, before you get too excited – there’s not a lot of money involved. You’ll be starting at the bottom. But you’ll learn a lot and it could lead on to something else.’

  ‘No, it’s perfect. But why me?’

  He laughs again. ‘Well, it wasn’t hard. No point sending anyone who isn’t going to make the most of it.’

  Mullan goes on a bit about emailing me the details and getting me to phone this Anneliese but all I can think is a great big YES that fills the sky. By the time I slip my phone back in my pocket I’m halfway to Germany in my mind. Early July, Mullan said. One month from now.

  I cycle out of the yard, passing Cam’s jeep on her way back in from giving Jim a lift home because his car’s off the road. She rolls down the window.

  ‘You’ve cheered up! Spirit go well?’

  Spirit? ‘Oh – yes. Fantastic.’ I can’t tell her yet. I want to hold it inside me for a bit, until I see it in writing or speak to what’s her name, Anneliese. I can’t speak German. Will they speak English?

  I tell Cam I’ll see her in the morning but not too early because I’m going to a party tonight, and start pedalling again. I hardly see the drumlins and hedges and the shorn straggles of sheep clinging to hillsides. I see horses in neat paddocks and me travelling all round Europe. Riding all kinds of brilliant German horses. Horses like Spirit and Flight. Better.

  I won’t stay in Germany forever. But when I want to move on, I’ll have experience in a top yard; I won’t be just some eighteen-year-old. I can apply for any of those jobs in Horse and Hound.

  A couple of miles from home my phone rings in my back pocket. Normally I’d ignore it but a sudden fear that it could be Mullan again, to say he’s sorry but it was a mistake, makes me jump off the bike in a muddy gateway and throw it down while I pull the phone out. Just as I press the green button I see it’s Seaneen. And I realise that for the first time in two and a half years something fantastic has happened that I can’t tell her. Not yet. It’s a weird feeling that makes me have to lean against the gate. ‘Hiya. What’s up?’

  A sigh at the other end. ‘I can’t go to Bronagh’s party. I’m sick.’

  ‘You were OK last night.’

  She groans. ‘I know. But I woke up feeling bleurgghhh.’

  ‘Must be a bug.’ Working with wee kids she does pick things up. I hope I haven’t caught it off her. All that kissing we were doing last night … ‘Poor old you. Is your mum looking after you?’

  ‘Hmm. I’m just going to bed.’

  ‘OK, babe. Hope you feel better soon.’ I look down at the churned-up mud beneath me, tracing what looks like a hoofprint with the toe of my boot.

  ‘You can still go to the party,’ she says.

  ‘No. Sure it wouldn’t be the same without you.’

  Her voice brightens up a bit. ‘I’ll probably be OK tomorrow. I’ll text you.’

  ‘OK. Take care.’

  I stuff the phone back in my pocket and stand in the gateway, looking across the fields, enjoying the feeling of not having to hurry. This is the last stretch of road before you hit the suburbs and estates and the fields have a grubby halfway look about them. This one has an old bed lying against the saggy fence, McDonald’s papers clinging to the barbs of wire, and the gate’s half off its hinges and tied up with three different colours of baler twine. At the far end of the field is a derelict barn, a few tin sheds, mostly without roofs, and a grey farmhouse with broken windows catching the light. Something about it makes me shiver – maybe it’s the contrast with the perfect German yard in my mind. As I pick up my bike from my gate I think I hear a horse neigh, but when I look back the field is definitely empty. Ghost horse, I think, or more likely I’m just thinking too much about German showjumpers.

  Back in my own streets, wishing I had a computer so I could Google Hans-Peter Hilgenberg, I wonder how much it’ll cost to fly to Germany and how quickly I can get a passport – I’ve never had one.

  Cian is hanging around the offie again, playing with his phone. He looks up when I cycle past but stares at me without recognition, cross-eyed with drink or something else.

  * * *

  Next evening I take a detour past the library. Haven’t been in here since Gran used to take me when I was a wee kid. The librarian gives me a funny look when I ask if I can use a computer, and makes me fill in a form and pay a pound. Then I have to wait for one to be free, even though the girl on it is only faffing around on Facebook. But at last I can go on to my email and, right enough, there’s the info from Mullan, the forwarded email from Anneliese – who writes better English than I do – and a link to the yard’s website.

  It’s even better than I imagined. I lean forwards towards the screen. Lists of competitions and prizes. Pictures of shining champion horses jumping impossible fences. The same horses at home grazing under huge trees. Young horses in an indoor school. An outdoor arena with the kind of jumps I’ve only ever seen at shows. Hans-Peter Hilgenberg has eight people working for him. For a moment that scares me – eight strangers. Always harder than horses. But if they speak German maybe it’ll be easier, in a weird way – they might not expect me to say much.

  My phone vibrates in my back pocket and I slip it out cautiously, because there’s signs up everywhere saying you aren’t allowed phones in the library. I check it under the desk. Seaneen: Where are you? I text back: Library, which she’ll think very strange. But her reply is more huffy than curious: Thanks for asking, I’m still sick.

  Shit. I haven’t texted her all day. I’ve had a pretty easy day at work; it’s never busy on a Monday. I took Spirit out on the farm trail, cleaned a load of tack, fixed a couple of dodgy fence poles and went to the saddler’s with Cam. I could easily have texted her.

  But sure I’m going away. She’ll be better off without me and at least she knows I’m a selfish pig. Because part of me’s been kind of glad she’s been sick. It’s easy to think about Germany when I’m away from her.

  Sorry. Thought you’d be at work.

  How could I be at work, I’ve been throwing up all day!!!!!!!!

  Sorry, I text back, scrolling through the list of Hans-Peter Hilgenberg’s Grand Prix horses, looking for the one I saw at Dublin last year, a jet-black stallion called Oskar. I calculate that I haven’t seen Seaneen for fortyeight hours – which hopefully means I’m not going to catch the bug. I feel fine. Better than fine. The only weird feeling inside me is the lovely secret I’ve been carrying about all day. In one month I’ll be flying to Germany. I open a new tab and bring up the passport office to see what I have to do. Seaneen doesn’t text back.

  4.

  Cam hugs me for the first time ever. I can see she doesn’t want me to leave even though I know she’ll never ever say so. She calls Jim into the barn to tell him.

  Jim snorts. ‘We’ll miss you, son.’ He looks at Cam. ‘You’ll need to get somebody in now. I won’t last another winter.’

  ‘Jim, you’re hardly sixty!’ Cam says.

  ‘Ach, I’m not fit to break ponies.’

  For a crazy moment I don’t want to leave at all. Things will happen and change here and I won’t be part of it any more.

  Wise up, I tell myself; you’ll be part of something
better.

  * * *

  I put off telling Mum until Friday evening. There’s never any knowing how she’s going to take things. When I first went away to college she wasn’t long back from rehab and was still getting over the guilt of letting her boyfriend Barry McCann throw me down a staircase while she was lying pissed in his bed. So if she was sad about me leaving she didn’t dare let on. She knew how close she was to me walking out on her forever. And I came back most weekends. Even if I spent all day at Cam’s and the evenings with Seaneen, I still slept in my own bed; this was still my home. And once Mum started going out and about a bit more on the estate and making new friends, she liked being able to say, ‘Our Declan’s at college.’ Better than saying, ‘Our Declan’s in Bankside.’ So maybe she’ll be proud of me now. ‘Our Declan’s away in Germany working in a big showjumping yard. He was picked out of all the ones in his course because he was the best.’ I put the words into her mouth but I’m not sure how well they fit. I know she’d rather I stayed at home. When I got back from college she’d got me some horsey channels on Sky as a surprise and she’d had my bedroom painted.

  ‘Germany?’ She says it like it’s another planet, and shakes her head so her earrings swing. I’ve waited until after tea. I even did the dishes and made her a cup of tea. Two years ago news like this would have sent her to the vodka cupboard, but there is no vodka cupboard now. Still, she lights a cigarette from the one she’s just finished.

  ‘Sure you have a job with Cam.’ She inhales deeply and frowns.

  ‘Cam’s is great, but – och, Mum! Are you not pleased for me? I got picked out of everybody. All those farmers’ daughters and Pony Clubbers. People who’ve been riding since they could walk. But they wanted me.’

  ‘Och, son, I am proud! Course I am.’ She looks up at the photo on the wall – me in a suit getting my certificate, with her and Seaneen grinning beside me. ‘But it’s awful far. You’ve never been out of Ireland.’

  ‘I went on a day trip to Scotland with Gran,’ I say, remembering getting up at five o’clock and feeling sick on the boat. How long will it take to get to Germany? Will I be able to come back for Christmas? Horses don’t get Christmas off.

  ‘I’ll have to tell Stacey.’ For a moment I think, who the hell’s Stacey? Until I remember it’s her new best friend.

  ‘She’s hardly going to be interested. She met me for, like, two seconds.’

  ‘No, but you don’t understand,’ Mum says. She lowers her voice as if Stacey’s in the next room instead of over the street. ‘You see her Cian – he’s got a few issues. That’s why they were put out of Portadown. He annoyed the wrong people.’ She flicks her ash into the ashtray.

  ‘So?’

  ‘Well, I’ve told her you used to be a bit – you know, wild when you were his age.’

  ‘Thanks, Mum.’

  ‘Och, son, it’s just to make her feel better. You know – seeing how well you turned out might give her a bit of hope. She’s demented with him.’

  ‘So what’s he done?’ I don’t give a shit about Cian but letting Mum witter on about him’s better than her talking about how far away Germany is.

  ‘Oh’ – she waves her cigarette in the air – ‘drinking, drugs, mitching off school.’

  ‘I never did drugs.’

  She could say, no, you were too busy nicking cars, but to be fair to her she doesn’t. She lights another cigarette and says, ‘Stacey had him when she was fifteen. She’s two wee girls now and they’re no bother, but that Cian … He was in care for a bit when he was younger cause she couldn’t cope with him.’

  ‘Look, Mum, I have to go and tell Seaneen.’ I try to say her name like it’s no big deal but my stomach contracts.

  ‘Oh?’ Mum manages to make it sound like a question.

  On the way to Seaneen’s I text Colette and Vicky, a few people from college and the lads in Wicklow. People who’ll be glad for me. I don’t know Mr Dermott’s number but I could email him at the school. Maybe it’s a bit sappy, telling a teacher, but if it hadn’t been for Dermie shoving his oar in and helping me to get to college I’d be on the dole now. Or worse.

  The Brogans’ crappy red Proton isn’t parked outside which makes me hope Seaneen’s on her own, but Mairéad answers the door. She gives me a funny look. She calls over her shoulder, ‘Seaneen!’ and leaves me standing on the doorstep.

  Seaneen appears at the door in her nursery uniform of lilac sweatshirt and black trousers. Not the most attractive outfit.

  ‘What’s up with your mum?’

  Seaneen shakes her head. ‘She’s just … well, she thinks you could have been a bit more concerned.’

  ‘About what?’ Then I remember she’s been sick. ‘Sorry. You do look a bit rough.’ Even her curls look lank and her eyes are kind of puffy. But if she’s back at work she must be OK.

  ‘Thanks.’

  ‘Look – can I come in? I’ve got’ – may as well get this over, and maybe the fact that she’s a bit pissed off with me anyway will make it easier –‘something I have to tell you.’

  ‘Yeah, me too.’ She turns and leads the way up the stairs.

  My insides flip over as I follow her. Is Seaneen about to dump me? So much for me worrying about breaking her heart!

  Seaneen’s room doesn’t feel as friendly as it did last Saturday night. She sits on the bed and picks up a cushion. She hugs it. She looks young and worried and fragile. But Seaneen’s never fragile.

  I sit down opposite her and put my hands on her shoulders. They’re rigid. ‘Seaneen, just tell me. It’s OK.’ I’m scared now. Is she really sick or something?

  She chews her lip and doesn’t look up.

  ‘Come on, babe.’

  She takes a deep breath and looks up at me and her big green eyes are sparkly with tears. ‘Declan, I’m pregnant.’

  III. Running

  1.

  For a long time I can’t speak. When I do manage to drag some words out they actually hurt, like they’re scraping my throat. ‘Are you sure?’

  She nods. ‘I missed two periods. I thought it was stress – the exams and Gran dying and all. But then on Sunday morning I was sick. And the next day. Every day.’ She makes a face. ‘And I feel … I dunno … dead weird. Tired. Everything tastes funny. So I did a test. And I was. Am.’

  She doesn’t say the word again.

  I get up and walk to the window. It’s a gorgeous evening. Seaneen’s wee sisters are out on their trampoline in the front garden. Mummy, Saoirse hit me! Mummy, I never!

  I lean my head against the cold glass. If I don’t turn round, it won’t be true. Seaneen will say it’s a joke.

  ‘Declan?’

  I sense her getting up and coming over. Feel her press herself against my back. The firm softness of her. The tickle of her curls. Her tears hot on the back of my neck. I know I have to turn round and hug her, tell her it’ll be OK.

  But I can’t.

  I’m frozen to the glass. And the moment I unfreeze is the moment it becomes true. Germany hovers in the air outside the window and fades away like the mirage it always was.

  Seaneen’s hand on my shoulder. ‘For God’s sake, Declan, say something! You’re scaring me here.’

  ‘I’m scaring you?’ I remember Mairéad being such a cow at the door. ‘Have you told your mum?’

  ‘She guessed when I was sick. She was the same way with the twins.’

  I swing round with a sudden twist of hope. ‘Is it definitely mine?’

  Seaneen’s eyes widen. ‘You –’ She steps back, lifts her hand and slaps my face.

  Which gives me the excuse I need to get out of that room with its stupid one-eyed teddies, down the stairs and out into the street. And to start running.

  At the end of Seaneen’s street I stop and catch my breath. I can either turn into my own street or keep going.

  I keep going. Slower now. It’s not like anybody’s chasing me. I can’t imagine Seaneen running down the street after me though I wouldn’t put it
past that Mairéad.

  Pregnant. A baby. A bloody baby. If I keep on walking it won’t be true. And I could keep on. Walk down the main road, into town. Go to the docks. Get on a boat. Where do they go – Liverpool? Scotland? Who cares. I can hide out until it’s time to go to Germany.

  Aye right. I check in my back pocket. Two twenty pound notes and a bit of change. That won’t get me far.

  But I can’t go home.

  When I get to the main road I slow down. My throat’s raw and aching even though there’s nothing to make it like that. Might as well get a couple of cans to wash that feeling away. I push open the off-licence door.

  In the fridge in front of the counter there’s a display of four-packs of Harp on offer. I grab one and pay for it out of one of the twenties, and I have the top off the first one as I elbow open the door to the street again.

  ‘Oi. Mate. Give us one?’

  I swing round, nearly choking on the first cool slurp of beer. It’s that bloody Cian, eyes glittering like he’s already on something. What kind of kid hangs around a backstreet off-licence on his own on a Friday night, hoping somebody’s going to be daft enough to give him a drink? I know I had my moments but …

  ‘You live over the road from me,’ I tell him.

  ‘So?’

  ‘So if you’re going to go round scrounging off your neighbours, you need to be nice to them. Here.’ I don’t know why but I peel one of the cans out of the plastic rings that hold them together. ‘Now piss off.’

  He doesn’t. He tears the top off the can and starts dogging my steps down the main road. Probably got his eye on another can. The sun’s still shining even though it’s about eight o’clock and if it wasn’t for the fact that the wee twerp’s only fifteen or something we could nearly be two lads walking down the road enjoying a nice cold beer. But every footstep beats out the word. Pregnant. Pregnant. Pregnant. It’s a wonder Cian can’t hear it.

  I cross the road just before the park and he stays beside me.