The Enchanted

by Charlotte Bingham

  ‘It’s just something to watch while I’m waiting, Evie,’ Alice replied, taking another look at her watch. ‘I know nothing about racing. I’ve never even been to a race meeting.’

  ‘My Den’s never off the track, if you ask me,’ Evie continued, her eyes fixed on the screen, sitting herself down in the chair next to Alice. ‘And if I was having a bet, he’s the one.’ She leaned forward to poke the screen with the end of her duster. ‘W. Swinburn. My Den says he don’t know how to lose.’

  The telephone rang, giving Alice an excuse to break up what was obviously going to turn into what Evie liked to think of as one of their nice cosy moments. ‘Excuse me, Evie. That might be Christian. To say why he’s late.’

  As it happened it wasn’t her son. It was her solicitor, ringing to remind her that she really needed to return the documents she had been sent, so they could settle her late husband’s estate.

  ‘I promise I’ll do them and return them straight away, Mr Pimlott,’ Alice told him. ‘It’s just that I have to go to the country today, but I’ll take them with me and drop them in at the post office.’

  ‘While I have you on the telephone, Mrs Dixon …’ The lawyer cleared his throat. ‘If I could just run another couple of things past you? It won’t take a minute.’

  Alice did her best to concentrate on what she was being told but as always legalese bored and baffled her. Everyone knew that the way the law was written was purposely to cheat people of any understanding of what was being done to them. And as her solicitor rambled on Alice stared at the street scene outside, thinking of anything except what he was saying to her, her mind going blank as usual. She watched an overdressed woman walking past the old bookshop opposite with a poodle on a lead and thought that nowadays poodles seemed to have gone out of fashion, remembering the time when a smart woman was rarely seen without a poodle on a lead.

  When she and Alexander had first moved into what was then only a two-bedroomed house, Kensington still had the feel of a village. Walking through Holland Street and the other back streets, they could have been in the country. In those days, friends who lived in Mayfair used to refer to travelling out to see them, very much in the way that Alice now thought of going to see her daughter and son-in-law in Richmond. Yet now Kensington had changed so much that even Evie was always giving it as her opinion that you couldn’t tell the High Street from Oxford Street. This statement was usually followed by an if-I-was-you lecture about Alice’s being better off moving out to a leafy suburb where she would be safer and healthier.

  Of course Alice knew that Evie was right, that not only Kensington but the whole of London had changed, and of course it would be more sensible to move out, the most sensible move of all being to Richmond, so she could be near Georgina and the grandchildren. But try as she did to interest herself in this most sensible of ideas, Alice finally found against it. It was just too … well, sensible.

  ‘Told you he’d win, Mrs D.,’ Evie announced when Alice had put down the telephone. ‘That W. Swinburn. Won by a street. Like I said, never rides a bad race.’

  Alice inwardly sighed with relief that the race was now over and Evie could resume her household chores.

  ‘You thought any more about moving, Mrs D.?’ Evie enquired, flicking her duster along the line of Alice’s favourite set of eighteenth-century prints, as always, and with unerring accuracy, managing to knock each one slightly crooked. ‘You was saying about moving out near your son-in-law and daughter, which as you know I think would be no bad thing. It would be no skin off of my nose – I could still do the journey just as easily from Battersea to help you, and it would be so nice for you and Georgina. And those lovely grandchildren of yours.’

  ‘Yes, I do see it would be nice for Georgina, Evie.’ Alice looked out of the window again, but this time to see if there was any sign of her son. ‘I’d obviously be much handier for babysitting and so on. I do see that. Limitless unpaid babysitting and school runs would be attractive, I can see.’

  ‘Now then, Mrs D.,’ Evie chided her. ‘That doesn’t sound at all like you.’

  ‘That’s probably because I’m not quite sure what me sounds like any more.’

  ‘Come again?’

  ‘It doesn’t matter, Evie, really.’

  Alice turned away. There were times when she thought, There’s lots of life in me still. I’m not going to just give in and become some sort of housekeeper and nanny – but there were just as many times when she missed her husband Alexander so much, she no longer saw the point in anything. ‘I’m just going to make sure I’ve left everything as I should,’ she continued, heading out of the sitting room. ‘It’s something Mr Dixon always did whenever we went away, and I still can’t get into the habit.’

  Sammy, her devoted West Highland terrier, who had been sitting perched on the arm of her chair, jumped down and followed his mistress into the kitchen.

  ‘Leftover life to kill,’ Alice said to herself. ‘Whatever that means, Sammy. But that’s not what we want to do, is it? Spend the rest of our life killing time.’

  In the weeks following Alexander’s sudden death she had nearly been rushed into agreeing to go and live in the basement of Georgina and Joe’s house in Richmond. Still stunned by her loss, she had thought it seemed only sensible to be near a married daughter, until her best friend Millie stepped in.

  ‘Too soon to make up your mind about anything, duck, much too soon,’ her oldest friend kept insisting.

  Alice had to listen to Millie, if only because when Millie had lost her husband many years before, instead of wasting time on self-pity, she had ignored her family’s protests and sold the rambling family home, moving to a cottage with a few acres where by sheer hard work, endeavour and determination she had made really quite a considerable success out of producing the kinds of jams and chutneys in which small local country delicatessens revelled – with the result that she was now not just self-supporting, but vaguely prosperous.

  ‘Best of all, Allie, I don’t have to rely on someone else. Number one rule of widowhood: whatever you do, don’t get in tow with some man, just because you’re feeling lonely. You should see the way some of the widows behave. Talk about ravers. I mean, you should see.’

  Now, as Alice waited for Christian to give her a lift down to Millie’s cottage where she had been invited to stay, she put her thoughts on hold. She would only think about the fun they were going to have.

  The telephone rang again.

  ‘I’ll bet that’s Georgina, Sammy,’ she said to the little dog. ‘I don’t know what it is, but there’s something about the way it rings when it’s Georgina. It just sounds different.’

  ‘Mum? Hi.’

  ‘I thought it would be you, Georgie. How are you? How’s tricks?’

  ‘Why did you think it would be me? I didn’t say I’d ring.’

  ‘Sorry. What I meant was I thought it might be you.’

  ‘Aren’t you meant to be in the country?’

  ‘If you thought I was in the country—’

  ‘I just wanted to ask Chris something.’ Georgina sighed. ‘If he’s arrived yet.’

  ‘Do you know something I don’t know?’

  ‘How? I just thought I’d ring on the off chance.’

  ‘Meaning you thought I’d still be here.’

  ‘I wouldn’t be ringing otherwise, would I?’

  ‘Let’s start again, shall we?’ Alice said, bending down to stroke Sammy. ‘How’s tricks?’

  ‘I do wish you wouldn’t always say that, Mum. I mean, what does it mean?’

  ‘It’s old-fashioned for how’s everything, really. How are Will and Finty?’

  ‘Same as they were last night when you saw them. So Chris hasn’t arrived yet, surprise surprise?’

  ‘Punctuality is not your brother’s strongest suit.’

  ‘He is taking you all the way to the country, Mum. That is seriously good of him, you know.’

  ‘I know, Georgie,’ Alice replied, still stroking Sammy, if
anything a little faster. ‘And it’s very kind of him.’

  ‘I think you should give him something for the petrol. Seriously.’

  ‘I have every intention of so doing, Georgina. I wouldn’t dream of not—’

  ‘There’s no need to get in a fluff.’

  ‘I am not in a fluff.’

  ‘You called me Georgina. You seriously only ever call me Georgina when you’re annoyed. I only rang to speak to Chris, you know.’

  ‘I’ll tell him to call you, shall I, when he gets here? Except hang on …’ Alice said, listening. ‘That might be him now.’

  After she had let her son in, she left him talking to his sister on the telephone while she ran a last check on the flat and her luggage, telling Evie that she too had best be on her way since she had to put on the alarm.

  Finally she found herself standing around waiting for Christian to finish his conversation with Georgina – which seemed to be a very earnest one, judging from all the seriouslys being bandied about – before they were able to make a move.

  ‘Georgie wants a quick word before we go, Mum.’ Christian waggled the telephone at his mother and handed over the receiver.

  ‘Mum. Look. Can you babysit next Friday? Be good if you could.’

  ‘No, I shall be away. I told you – I’m going away for the week.’

  ‘Couldn’t you come back a bit early, though? Like Friday? You know what the traffic’s like at the weekend.’

  ‘I’m going away until Wednesday week, actually.’

  ‘O-kay,’ Georgina continued slowly, obviously determined not to let this one go. ‘You could come back up by train. Joe could meet you.’

  ‘Georgina,’ Alice said slowly. ‘What’s happened to your regular babysitters?’

  ‘One of them’s got a filthy cold and Joe’s seriously off Tina. He thinks she nicks things, mostly his Scotch. Seriously – you could zap back up by train on Friday, no sweat. We’ve got tickets for this gig then there’s a do afterwards—’

  ‘Darling, I really can’t,’ Alice interrupted. ‘I really can’t trek all the way up from Dorset just to babysit.’

  ‘Oh, thanks, Mum.’

  ‘I just couldn’t.’

  ‘Thanks a bunch. It’s not just pleasure, you know. It’s business. Joe has to be there.’

  ‘I’m sure you’ll find someone, darling.’

  ‘And darling’s as telling as Georgina, Mum. At least it is the way you say it.’

  ‘I’ll ring you from Millie’s,’ Alice finally said after a short pause, feeling herself weakening.

  ‘Don’t bother. I’m sure we’ll manage. ’Bye!’

  Georgina hung up, leaving Alice to stare blankly at the humming receiver.

  ‘What did she want?’

  ‘Wanted me to come back up to babysit on Friday.’

  ‘Man – Georgie really is something else.’

  Alice clipped Sammy’s lead on his collar. ‘Anyway. Sorry to keep you, Christian. We can go now.’

  ‘Mum?’ Chris said as he took the bags he had let his mother carry and put them in the back of his Golf GTI. ‘I wonder. Can you bung me a ton? Just for my hols? I’ll pay you back end of the month.’

  ‘I lent you a hundred and fifty only last month, darling.’

  ‘Yeah …’ Chris said, getting in the car at the same time as his mother. ‘But that was for the rent – I don’t have any spending money. And I’m going to look a right dweeb with Dan and Matt if I can’t ante up.’

  ‘I don’t know what you’re all talking about half the time,’ Alice grumbled, opening her handbag and sorting through the myriad contents up to and including two Bonios for Sammy. ‘Most I can do is fifty – and I want it back at the end of the month.’

  ‘Good as done, Ma.’ Chris grinned, pocketing the loot. ‘You are such a star.’

  Jamming the car into first gear and keeping the brake on, Chris spun the wheels of the GTI then fast-started it into the outward-bound traffic, throwing Alice backwards in her seat before she even had time to do up her seat belt.

  ‘Great wheels, eh?’ He laughed. ‘Blow your rocks off.’

  Clutching the grab handle above her head and Sammy on her knee, Alice found herself wishing that she’d hired a car to take her to Dorset. Not only would it have been safer, but it would have been a lot cheaper.

  Christian put a tape in the cassette player.

  ‘Are we going to have this all the way to Dorset?’ she wondered as they sat in a traffic jam at the top of the Earl’s Court Road.

  ‘Sorr-ee!’ Christian stared out of the window as a pretty girl in a fashionable bright blue silk dress sashayed by on the opposite side of the road. ‘Don’t you like The Clash?’

  ‘It is a little … how can I say … loud.’

  ‘OK. Bit of the old Radio Middle-of-the-road? Yes?’ Christian asked, switching to the radio.

  ‘Anything would be better than the whoever they were.’

  ‘The Clash, Mother,’ Christian said in his talking-to-old-people voice. ‘Just the best punk band of all time, that’s all.’

  ‘Oh, we’re going to have to go back to the house,’ Alice said suddenly. ‘I left the television plugged in.’

  ‘You what?’ Her son stared at her incredulously.

  ‘I know, I know,’ Alice sighed. ‘But your father always said you have to pull the plug out of the wall.’

  ‘No way, Mother. Seriously.’

  ‘I shan’t enjoy a minute of my holiday otherwise.’

  ‘Ma … ?’

  ‘Please?’

  With a histrionic groan, Christian turned off at the traffic lights on the Cromwell Road and drove his mother back to her house, where he ran in to pull the plug out for her.

  ‘Oh God, Mother.’ Returning, he peered through the passenger window and chucked the keys into her lap. ‘It was off.’ He climbed back into the car. ‘For that, I choose where we have lunch.’

  ‘The least I can do,’ Alice muttered, doing up her safety belt. ‘Sorry.’

  ‘OK.’ Christian nodded. ‘Music of my choice as well. OK?’

  ‘Whatever you say.’

  An hour and a half later, as they were speeding their way west down the hill that leads back up to pass Stonehenge, they both saw that the traffic ahead was coming to a standstill fast.

  ‘Now what?’ Christian said, lowering his window to try to get a better view of what was causing the jam. ‘There’s some idiot jumping up and down in the middle of the road.’

  ‘I do hope there hasn’t been an accident,’ Alice said, quickly taking the chance to turn the music down.

  ‘I hardly think they’ve stopped to have a picnic, Ma,’ Christian replied. ‘This isn’t going anywhere. I’m going to take a look-see.’

  He hopped out of the car and disappeared, running along the verge. He was back a couple of minutes later, looking grim.

  ‘Just don’t look when we get to go past. Some idiot’s run over a horse.’

  Sitting and sketching no more than a quarter of a mile away on a hillock to the north of the prehistoric stones Rory had no idea of the cause of the accident. It was true that at one point he had noticed a traffic jam forming, but since that stretch of the A303 was a notorious bottleneck for westbound traffic he had thought nothing of it. A little later he had become aware that there might have been an accident of sorts as he spotted the arrival of a police car, but again, given that it was a long straight road, he simply put it down to yet another lethally impatient driver. Soon it started to rain again, so he threw in the creative towel and went home.

  He had hardly had time to park his old Land Rover and walk into the stable yard before he knew something was up, and not just from the look on the lads’ faces. Normally the yard at Fulford Farm was a cheery place, underwriting the amiable nature of Rory’s father, Anthony, who had been training race-horses in a charming and deceptively laid back way ever since he had left the army. The yard might not be smart – in fact first-time visitors were generally dismayed by
the really rather down-at-heel appearance of an establishment where none of the stable doors matched or fitted, tiles were falling off roofs, and every drainpipe seemed to run at a different angle – but a closer inspection would reveal that the horses’ beds were clean and deep and the jumbled boxes surprisingly draught-free and spacious, and the tack was spotless. There were no fashionable matching anoraks for the staff at Fulford, where the horses pulled out to work every morning this side of late, attired in a variety of rugs and sheets that looked as if they might just have been snatched from one of the dog beds lined up against the walls of the Guv’s far from spotless office, but, more important than anything else, the horses were healthy, and well cared for. Not that this made much difference to the luck of the establishment, which could be described, at best, as being sporadic.

  Anthony Rawlins had had his share of national hunt winners, or rather more correctly had once had his share of winners, but in the past half a dozen years his tally had fallen, and the yard still existed thanks mainly to the goodwill and affection of a small but loyal band of owners who would rather enjoy their racing than be part of one of the increasingly impersonal large training yards. Fun had always been Anthony Rawlins’s target. He couldn’t abide trainers who referred to racing as an industry and thought of their owners as mushrooms – fed on rubbish and kept in the dark.

  The last season had been the worst ever at Fulford Farm, a horrendous six months during which he had lost three horses, one in a schooling accident and two of his most promising young chasers on the racecourse. It had taken more out of him than even he had realised, a fact which had never hit him harder than at this moment.

  ‘It seems the saddle slipped,’ Anthony told Rory when his son found him in his office. ‘Something must have spooked the mare, because it was very out of character. She might even have been stung, who knows? Anyway, she dumped Teddy, jumped the wire and disappeared into the heart of the plains.’

  ‘It wouldn’t have helped if the saddle was still on her.’

  ‘Wasn’t on when the lorry hit her,’ Anthony replied, lighting another cigarette from the end of his last one. ‘Anything might have happened. But God knows how she got where she did. Someone said they saw a horse charging east along the road from the roundabout just past Stonehenge, but if she’d come down the road from Larkhill …’