Grounded

by Wilkinson, Sheena;

  ‘So? Nothing to do with us. Come on.’ But Seaneen ploughs on over to him. It’s just like that first morning. I stand back in the line of scrubby trees. I kick a bottle. I try not to look at them but there’s something about the way Seaneen’s standing, arms folded under her tits, feet planted squarely, that reminds me of the way she used to be, back in school, when she fancied me and was always trying to get me to cheer up and talk and everything. At least she can’t fancy Cian.

  I hear the rise and fall of her voice, but nothing from him, and she soon gives up. She comes back to me, arms still folded, shaking her head.

  ‘Can’t get any sense out of him. God love him.’

  ‘God love him?’

  ‘He’s been at that old lighter fuel. I thought nineyear-olds sniffed that.’

  ‘Right enough. I should have let him have that two hundred quid, shouldn’t I? So he could have got himself a better fix. Champagne maybe? Or he might rather have had a nice line of coke?’

  ‘Declan.’

  ‘Well, he’s a wee bastard.’

  ‘I hope he gets home OK. Stacey’ll kick his arse if he gets in in that state.’

  ‘I hope she kicks it hard.’

  ‘Declan, you’re all heart.’

  ‘It’s not you he robbed off.’

  ‘Tried to.’

  ‘Same thing.’

  We walk on a bit. When we get to the estate Seaneen asks if I want to go to her house but I say no. I kiss her goodbye at the corner of Tirconnell Parade. I try to make the kiss say sorry for being a grumpy shite but I don’t think I manage it.

  That bloody Stacey is at our house again. As soon as I push the front door open her nasal whine hits me. I hesitate outside the living-room door.

  ‘That you, love?’ Mum calls out.

  Who else would it be? ‘Yeah. Just going up to my room.’

  ‘OK.’ She doesn’t even try to get me to come in the way she normally does. They must be in the middle of a juicy gossip. I clomp upstairs, then tiptoe back down and sit on the bottom step. Haven’t done this since I was a kid and Gran had her friends in, but all they ever talked about were women’s insides and what the priest had said.

  ‘Och, there’s no way you’ll look like a granny.’ Stacey says.

  Oh God. I nearly go back upstairs. Only I’m still too restless. I need distraction. Maybe I should go out and walk around a bit, tire myself out.

  ‘I hope that’s not the next thing with our Cian.’

  ‘Och, no, Stacey. Not at his age.’

  ‘I’d be the last to know.’

  If Mum says again that Seaneen was the making of me I’ll have to go in there and shut them up.

  ‘Sure Declan tells me nothing.’

  Well, that’s true.

  ‘Give me girls any time. Maybe the baby’ll be a girl. Wouldn’t that be lovely?’

  ‘Aye, I’d have her spoilt rotten.’

  ‘You can get gorgeous wee things. My Courtney and Madison’s room’s like a fairy castle.’

  ‘At least you’ve no bother with them. And you keep them lovely.’

  I don’t know why I’m listening to this crap. I think I’m just enjoying the fact that she’s in here saying what a good mother she is when her wee lad’s out sniffing lighter fuel.

  ‘But I worry all the time. Social services poking round. It’s only cause of him. He’s the only one’s ever been any bother. Staying out all night, getting in trouble, not going to school. From the day and hour that child was born –’

  ‘And when did they take him away?’

  ‘Three.’

  But even Cian can’t have been running away and mitching and getting into trouble when he was three.

  ‘He was away five years – I don’t know how many foster homes – and when he came back he was like a stranger. Course I’d sorted myself out by then. New man and all. Courtney’s dad. I wanted him back – I fought for him all those years. I thought we could be a family. But I sometimes wish …’

  Mum makes a sympathetic noise.

  ‘When Courtney was born he never gave her a minute’s peace. Trying to lift her out of her carrycot. He dropped her once, banged her on the head, and you should have seen them social workers poking round again with their reports and their files. Just checking the baby was in a safe environment. The baby was OK – it was him; he was like an alien.’

  ‘God love you, Stacey. Sure Declan was the same when he came out of Bankside. It was like having a stranger in the house.’

  Because Gran had died.

  Because you suddenly had to put up with a fourteen-year-old son for the first time.

  Because you were too pissed to hack it.

  Because you blamed me for Barry leaving.

  I bite the inside of my cheek.

  ‘Aye, well, that’ll be the next thing for him. He’ll not make it to sixteen without getting into serious trouble.’

  ‘He must have your head turned.’

  ‘And now I’ve met Darren, and he’s lovely, Theresa – I think he’s the one, you know, but Cian’s always spoiling for a fight, hardly even speaks to him. I sometimes wish he’d do something bad enough so they would take him away. Is that terrible?’ She goes on without waiting for an answer. ‘I think he’s always blamed me because I’ve never known who his dad was. I was only a kid, Theresa. I’d been in and out of foster homes all my life; I just wanted some affection.’

  ‘God love you. I was with Declan’s dad from I was no age. He wasn’t the steadiest, like, but sure neither was I …’

  And off she rambles boringly into the past and I realise my legs have cramped from sitting. I go to my room and lie for ages looking at the streetlight flickering through the curtains and trying to ignore the hum of voices from underneath me.

  When I finally sleep I dream about a barn full of dead horses. Flies bigger than bats buzz round my head and when I try to call for help the buttons on my phone keep shifting out of place and have no numbers on them. And in the corner of the barn, instead of the ghost horse, there’s Cian playing with the dead foal.

  3.

  For two weeks I obsess about the grey mare, sometimes as a psycho ghost horse that won’t stop haunting me; sometimes as a potential showjumper who’s just had a bit of a rough start.

  Two weeks of trying to improve Joy who can’t see any reason why she should change the laid-back ways of a lifetime. Two weeks of ignoring Lara’s comments about how it’s lovely to see me having a bit of fun on Joy but of course there’s nothing like your own horse and what a pity I won’t be able to go to the big show at Cavan but there wouldn’t be room in the lorry.

  ‘Not that there’d be any point going with nothing to ride,’ she says, leaning on the gate of the school, having a good look at Joy refusing for the third time to lead off on the right leg. ‘You should use your stick,’ she says. I know where I’d like to put my stick. I can do it, I want to say. I won at Balmoral. But that feels like another life now.

  ‘Cam needs me to look after this place when she’s away,’ I mutter. Which isn’t even true – Jim could cope if he had to.

  ‘Willow’s stable walls need creosoting,’ she says. ‘You’d have to dig out all the bedding first but it would give you something to do.’

  I give Joy a sharper kick than I mean to, just to get away from Lara, and she’s so taken aback that she actually strikes off on the right leg and I keep her cantering round the school until I see Lara’s skinny arse heading back up to the yard.

  ‘Why are you taking her?’ I complain to Cam when we’re putting the tack away one evening. ‘Let them make their own way.’

  ‘They’ll pay half the diesel,’ Cam says. ‘It’s no joke taking a lorry this size any distance, with fuel the price it is.’

  ‘But listening to that for three days!’

  ‘Are you jealous?’ She fixes me with one of her hard green stares.

  ‘Wise up.’

  But when Cam and Lara drive off in the lorry I feel more left behind and o
ut of it than ever.

  It’s also two weeks of my mum nagging me about the baby and making decisions.

  ‘I told you a million times, I’m not going anywhere, so what is there to decide?’ I tell her the day Cam goes off to Cavan. I had to stay at the yard until eight to get everything done and then cycle home, and the only thing I want to do is eat the chips I bought in Fat Frankie’s, lie in the bath and go to bed.

  She hovers over the sofa, frowning because my socks have left a few bits of grass on the carpet. Sometimes I wish she’d never sobered up. ‘Where are you going to live, for a start?’ She picks up the grass.

  I sigh. ‘Mum, it’s not due for ages. Will you stop going on about it?’

  ‘It’s not that long. Isn’t she ten weeks gone now?’

  Gone. That’s a horrible expression. ‘Something like that.’

  ‘You need to show more interest.’ She pounces on an invisible speck of mud on the carpet and tuts.

  ‘For Christ’s sake, Mum, I’m only in, I’m knackered, I’m starving, would you leave me alone? There’s nothing to be interested in yet.’

  ‘That’s your child.’

  It’s not a child. It’s just a bundle of cells that aren’t showing yet on the outside, that are making Seaneen pale and sick and weepy sometimes, but otherwise she’s the same, just Seaneen. We’re getting on fine – it’s just that when I’m with her it’s impossible to forget about the baby. Which is probably why I still haven’t told anybody at the yard, so sometimes when I’m there I can forget about it for hours at a time. It’s only when I’m doing something mindless, like digging out Willow’s bed so I can creosote the walls of the stable, which is what’s got me so sweaty and dirty today, that I start thinking about it, and then I can distract myself by imagining the grey mare jumping in Dublin. I spear a fat chip.

  ‘Declan.’ Mum’s voice is like a phone that won’t stop ringing. ‘You can’t just do your usual trick.’

  ‘What trick? I haven’t got a trick.’ I wrap the chips up again.

  ‘Refusing to talk about things. Pretending they’re not happening.’ Mum thinks everybody should be talking about everything all the time, just cause of all that counselling she’s had.

  ‘There’s nothing to say.’

  ‘There’ll be something to say when it’s born, Declan.’

  I screw up the chip paper. ‘I’m going out,’ I say. Sod the bath, sod the early night. Not killing my mum is suddenly a priority.

  I go out the back, dump the chips in the bin and think about getting on my bike and spinning off for miles. But it’ll be dark soon, there’s nowhere to go and I really am too knackered so in the end I walk round to the Spar and buy a can of Coke – I haven’t had a proper drink since Seaneen told me she was up the duff. There’s a queue and only Cathal Gurney’s on the till, so he’s not getting through it too quickly. It’s not a real job – he’s on some kind of scheme for thick people – so I don’t know why he’s been left on his own.

  ‘Hey, state of you, horse boy.’

  I glance round and see Cian in the queue behind me.

  ‘Smell you,’ he goes on, wrinkling his nose. His eyes look darker than usual, the pupils huge.

  ‘Watch him,’ I say to Cathal in a loud voice. The wee old lady in front of me turns and looks me up and down like I just escaped from the mental. She clutches her bag tighter. ‘Search him on the way out; he’s probably nicked something.’

  I set my Coke down on the counter and walk out. It’s either that or thump the wee bastard.

  * * *

  Seaneen gets up and closes her bedroom door more firmly on the theme tune of EastEnders from downstairs. ‘Just phone Doris. At least go up and see the horse.’

  ‘But am I mad?’

  ‘Probably.’ She comes back over to the bed, leans forward and kisses the end of my nose, then pulls away. ‘God, Cian was right even if he was off his head; you are a bit whiffy.’

  ‘You always say sweat’s sexy.’

  She sniffs and looks thoughtful. ‘This is more like … horse wee.’

  ‘But am I? Mad?’

  ‘You were going to take the foal. What’s the difference?’ To her a horse is just a horse. A head, four legs. Something she’ll visit and feed apples to as long as it doesn’t move too quickly or fart or snort or kick out.

  ‘I told you. She’s more complicated.’

  Seaneen shrugs. ‘Everything’s complicated.’

  ‘No – I mean … I don’t know. I want her, but I don’t want her. I’m – there’s something about her that scares me,’ I admit for the first time.

  Seaneen’s hand lies for a moment across her belly even though there’s nothing to see yet. Her nails are bitten. ‘Declan, I’m scared of this, you know. I mean – I want it. I wouldn’t wish it away now, but I’m terrified. Will it hurt? Will there be something wrong with it? What if I can’t be a good mum? All that.’

  ‘And I’m going on about a horse. I know it seems –’

  ‘No.’ She gives me a quick hug. ‘I don’t mean that. I mean, just because it’s scary doesn’t mean it’s not the right thing to do. You found her. You should keep her. And when you go and see her I’m coming with you.’

  * * *

  Doris falls in love with Seaneen at first sight and takes her to see all kinds of pathetic creatures that she never showed me. I trail behind them for a bit then go down to the paddock where the grey mare is turned out and watch her for a bit. Even in two weeks she’s like a different horse. Still skinny and tatty in places, but the scabs have faded and dropped off, and she grazes watchfully but intently under a huge old tree at the far end. It’s a cool, breezy evening and when the leaves rustle too loudly she shivers. I don’t go into the field; I just watch her being a horse for a bit.

  I find Seaneen in one of the stables with a miniature Shetland foal on her knee. It’s about the size of a cat or a lamb. She kneels in the straw and holds it and it lips at her hair.

  ‘It must think it’s hay,’ I say, leaning over the half-door.

  ‘Thanks.’

  ‘I thought you were scared of horses.’

  ‘Big monsters like that Flight. Sure you couldn’t be scared of a wee baby like this.’ She runs her hand over its fluffy neck.

  ‘They grow up.’

  Seaneen looks over at the foal’s mother, which is about the size of a Labrador, her brown eyes peeping from under a bushy spring of black mane. ‘Doris says she was found in a garden shed. Somebody got her for their daughter’s birthday. Hadn’t a clue how to look after her, just got her off a man in the pub. Didn’t even know she was having a foal.’

  Doris stops outside the door. ‘Come and see the mare,’ she says. ‘I’ve got some apples for her. You might as well get to know her.’

  We wander back to the paddock, with Doris demonstrating to Seaneen the right way to hold a treat with her hand out flat. We all lean over the fence while Doris shows the grey mare the apples and waits for her to approach. She’ll never come, I think, but slowly, a step at a time, checking all round her, the mare walks towards us. Her ears are on the flick all the time and she keeps one eye fixed on us, but she keeps coming.

  ‘You see, she’s much happier out of doors now the scabs are healing.’ Doris opens the gate and waves me and Seaneen through, then follows us. The mare stops when she sees so many people coming into her space. She puts her ears back, but the smell of the apples seems to be enough to overcome some of her natural fear and when Seaneen reaches out a hand with an apple slice on it, the mare stretches out her neck, makes a quick grab for it and stands back, eating it. Seaneen stays totally still, hardly breathing, her face breaking into a wide grin. ‘Och, God love her,’ she whispers.

  I take a slice too and reach out my hand, and the mare looks at me with those sunken black eyes. I get the feeling she’d rather have Seaneen. Come on, I will her; come to me. Please trust me.

  She stops a couple of feet from me. I can’t stretch out my hand any further. She makes her
neck like a giraffe’s and snatches the apple so fast I hardly register that she’s got it. I want to reach my hand out and touch her shoulder but I know she won’t let me go that far. Up close you can still see her ribs clearly but her backbone no longer sticks up like a cow’s. ‘Good girl,’ I whisper. Her ears twitch and she backs off a few paces.

  Behind me I can hear Doris saying quietly to Seaneen, ‘She doesn’t trust people. She’s had no reason to.’

  There’s no apple left now, and the mare decides she’s had enough of human company and trots away down the field. She carries her tail high when she trots and looks almost pretty.

  We all lean over the gate again. Doris seems more relaxed today, maybe because it’s evening, or more likely because people always relax and want to chat with Seaneen.

  ‘So, Doris, don’t you think Declan could give the horse a good home?’ Seaneen asks, pulling at a bit of hair that’s got tangled in the wind.

  ‘I’d be keeping her with Camilla Brooke,’ I say quickly. ‘I work for her.’ I’ve come in jodhpurs and boots today just to let her see I’m not a hood but a serious horsey person.

  Doris’s face lights up. ‘Little Camilla. I used to hunt with Henry and Harriet – her parents.’

  Seaneen’s eyes widen at the mention of hunting but she doesn’t say anything.

  ‘Well, you’d certainly be all right with Camilla behind you. Taught her in the Pony Club. What was her pony called? Flea-bitten grey, nice little chap?’

  She’s not asking like she expects me to answer, just trying to remember for herself, but she looks delighted when I say, ‘Sweep. She still has him.’

  ‘Jolly good.’

  ‘So it’d be a good home,’ I go on.

  ‘Long as you’re patient. She needs a lot of time. Come and spend time here with her. Get to know her. There’s no rush to take her away, is there? Though I admit I’d be glad of the space. Need to get the Shetland mare and foal out to grass soon.’

  ‘And I’ll come too,’ Seaneen says. ‘Cuddle that foal before it gets too big to fit on my knee.’

  ‘More than welcome.’ Doris straightens up her back, putting a hand to it and wincing. ‘Well, must get on. Horses won’t feed themselves.’