The Enchanted

by Charlotte Bingham

  ‘If she was on that road,’ Rory agreed, as his father petered out, ‘yes, why hadn’t she headed for home? First thing the older horses do – bolt for home. I remember when I came off Ozzy at Larkhill, he headed straight back here.’

  ‘We’ll never know. That’s horses. They have their ways.’

  Moss Daisy, the mare who had just been killed on the road, happened to be the yard’s favourite, not only because she had won two particularly competitive handicaps at their local racecourse, but also because of her character. With a saddle on her she had been a street fighter, but in her box and in the paddocks she had been a lop-eared dozy old softie, with an addiction to Extra Strong mints. Everyone loved her, and now she was gone and her lad was bereft.

  ‘I’ve told Teddy it wasn’t his fault,’ Anthony said. ‘These things happen. That’s racing, as if he didn’t know.’

  ‘Did he check his girths before they galloped? I know it sounds like an obvious thing to ask, Dad—’

  ‘He said he did and if he said he did, he probably did. But it happens. It happened to me once in a Members’ Race up at Larkhill, just as I was coming to win it.’

  ‘Sure, Dad. During a race it’s understandable, but before a gallop?’

  ‘It was an accident, Rory,’ Anthony said, cutting his son short. ‘And even if it wasn’t, it’s not going to bring the mare back.’

  Of course his father was right. Even if the lad had been to blame, the how and why of the accident was only academic. They both knew there was a possibility that Teddy had failed to check the girths prior to doing some fast work, but then they both also knew that, if that were the case, the lad’s guilt would be punishment enough.

  ‘You’re looking a bit tired, Dad,’ Rory murmured over dinner that evening.

  ‘Hardly surprising, old lad,’ Anthony said, pouring the wine. ‘All things considered.’

  ‘You haven’t had a break in ages.’

  ‘That’s because I don’t like breaks, as you call them, chum. It was different when your mother was alive, but now, what’s the point?’

  ‘It would get you away from here, that’s the point. You really should get away, just for a few days – fishing or something. You’ve got a good staff here. And I can keep an eye on things.’

  His father regarded him over his wine glass, but said nothing, turning his attention to his food.

  ‘Tell you what,’ he admitted finally. ‘I was actually thinking of going to Ireland.’

  ‘Horses?’

  ‘That time of year. If I do go, I don’t suppose you’d feel like coming? We could put in a few days’ fishing first, then amble along and look at some harses. Could be fun.’

  ‘Yes, OK. I must admit I’ve always wanted to go.’

  ‘And you’ve always refused.’

  ‘Because there were always reasons.’

  ‘One particularly good reason.’

  ‘Don’t go there.’

  ‘Wasn’t going to, old boy. Where angels fear to tread department. So you’ll come, then?’

  ‘Of course.’

  ‘It’ll be fun. We’ll have some fun.’

  Anthony went to bed that night feeling a little more cheerful than he had expected, the loss of Moss Daisy being slightly mitigated by the knowledge that he had persuaded his son to come with him to Ireland. Not that he was feeling particularly fatalistic; it was simply something he had been wanting them both to do – before it was too late.

  ‘No need for all that kind of thinking. Mustn’t look back,’ he scolded himself as he sat on the edge of his half-made bed smoking the last cigarette of the day. ‘It’s just losing the mare, it’s getting to you, making you soggy round the edges. Can’t have that.’

  It would do them both good, going away. They’d get in some fishing, on the Ban maybe, then take their time driving through Cork where he’d look up old horse friends and introduce them to his son and heir. If anyone needed a break it was surely Rory, after all he’d been through at the hands of his long-time girlfriend, the minx who’d spun him at the eleventh hour, just when they were all set and under orders to go up the aisle.

  Anthony had liked Penny well enough, but he’d never trusted her, not for a moment. She was pretty and amusing and had seemed devoted to Rory, at least whenever the three of them were together, but there was something about her face in repose that struck a warning note.

  ‘What do you really want out of life, old boy?’ Anthony found himself asking Rory, out of the blue, as they were driving to the airport a few days later. ‘I know we’ve talked about it before, but what do you really want?’

  ‘You know what I really want, Dad.’ Rory tried not to sound embarrassed, and failed.

  ‘I don’t have to leave the place to you, you know. I can just as easily sell up, let you have your bundle and go and live in a warm air bungalow somewhere. There’s no obligation to you as far as Fulford Farm goes.’

  ‘What else would I do? It’s something you’ve brought me up to do, you and Ma, to take over.’

  ‘Mmm. But. What about your painting? Your drawing?’

  ‘There are an awful lot of people who are a great deal more talented than me.’

  ‘There are even more people who can train better than me, but that didn’t stop me.’

  ‘We don’t have to talk about this now, you know. It’s time to have fun.’

  ‘You bet,’ Anthony agreed, as Rory headed the car on to the airport approach road. ‘Let the craic commence.’

  They stayed for five days in an old inn at Glenbeigh in County Kerry where they fished the local river by day and by night. Anthony caught over a dozen good trout and Rory caught his first salmon, a decent six-and-a-half-pound fish which tasted as well as it had fought.

  The September weather was soft and full of sunlight, so golden in fact that the two men were loath to leave their small hotel with its semi-tropical garden and wonderful views over the sea and Rossbeigh Strand, and to compensate made a booking for a ten-day fishing holiday the following year. Then they packed their stuff into their hire car and set off for Cork. As they left the weather broke and the first rains of autumn blew in off the Atlantic.

  The following morning they found themselves standing for what seemed like an eternity on the edge of an unkempt and rainswept field just outside the undistinguished town of Cronagh, some thirty miles on from Cork city.

  ‘I’m just glad we had the craic up there in Kerry, Dad,’ Rory said, zipping his old Barbour jacket up to his chin. ‘This is not a place to spend quality time.’

  ‘You’d be surprised, old chap,’ Anthony returned cheerfully. ‘It breaks out in the most surprising places over here.’

  ‘What does exactly?’

  ‘Life. Life Irish style.’

  ‘Not here, surely? This isn’t just a place that time forgot. This is a place it never visited. That town. How about that for dismal? It’s got more bars than houses.’

  ‘Wisht, as they say,’ his father replied. ‘Hold your hour. You haven’t seen anything yet.’

  At this point the long-awaited, bedraggled figure of Sean Phelan appeared out of the mists and rain, leading a miserable mud-covered horse for inspection.

  ‘I think you showed me this poor chap last year, Sean,’ Anthony told the dealer after a cursory inspection. ‘Probably the year before as well.’

  ‘I did not so!’ Phelan protested as he tried to pull the recalcitrant horse out of the mud and up on to the patch of weed-covered concrete by the gate. ‘Sure I never had this fellow last year, so I did not! If I’d had him I’d have sold him be now. You just take one look at him yourself and see the quality.’

  ‘All I can see is skin and bone, Sean,’ Anthony insisted. ‘And the same two scars on its knees as it had last year.’

  ‘Scars?’ Sean yelped. ‘What are you talking about, Mr Rawlins, sir, forgiving your presence? This horse is entirely unblemished!’

  ‘I remember these scars, Sean. Two of them across both of his knees – where last
year you yourself said he’d grazed himself getting out of the horsebox.’

  ‘Where?’ Phelan began another of his elaborate pantomimes, pushing his rain-drenched hat to the back of his head as he bent down to stare at the unfortunate animal’s fore legs. ‘Jeeze, would you look at that now – however did he come by those things? Sure he hadn’t a mark on him this morning.’

  ‘Is that so?’ Anthony wondered mock-seriously. ‘So how come I can see old stitch marks?’

  ‘Stitch marks?’ Phelan said. ‘This is getting worse be the minute. Someone’s been at him, that’s what they’ve been, at him, they have.’

  The dealer made a mighty show of clucking his tongue and shaking his head in mock shock and dismay at the discovery of wounds inflicted on the miserable horse well over twelve months ago.

  ‘If you’ve nothing else to show me, Sean …’ Anthony said with a private wink to Rory, sinking his freezing hands into the deep pockets of his old raincoat.

  ‘This is a grand animal, Mr Rawlins – you’d have to be as mad as a hawk to spin him, the way you are intent.’

  ‘That is a poor old creature, Sean, fit only for one thing. And you’re as big a rogue as ever you were.’

  ‘I am not so!’ Phelan protested, dropping the horse’s leg, which he had been tenderly nursing, and slapping away the half-starved animal on its rump with his hat. ‘The thing is you’ve not got the eye for him. Not for a good ’un, you just haven’t the eye, Mr Rawlins, sir, saving your presence.’

  ‘Ah well, Sean.’ Anthony paused and mock-sighed. ‘Let’s just hope my misfortune is someone else’s great luck.’

  ‘Ach,’ Sean growled. ‘Away with ye! You’d have spun Arkle, so ye would!’

  ‘OK, Dad,’ Rory said once they were in the car and out of the dealer’s earshot. ‘What in God’s name brings you to this godforsaken place anyway?’

  ‘Believe it or not, my son,’ his father replied, ‘I got the Mighty Midge from old Sean Phelan.’

  ‘You’re putting me on!’ Rory stared at his father in amazement. ‘The Mighty Midge? Who won the Cathcart?’

  ‘My one and only Cheltenham winner. He came out of the very same field as that poor old wreck. I always come back here, just in case, in spite of what they say, lightning does strike twice.’

  ‘But it never has.’

  ‘You know as well as I do, old boy. God knows how he bred it, and you know what sort of horse that was.’

  ‘If only he hadn’t broken down …’

  ‘If onlys keep us all in the game. Racing’s full of if onlys.’

  ‘You said yourself he’d have been a Gold Cup horse.’

  ‘Racing’s also full of might have beens. Time for a jar,’ Anthony decided. ‘Don’t know about you, but I am cold.’

  Rory glanced at his father. It was unlike him to complain, and while it had certainly been wet it really wasn’t cold.

  ‘You OK, Pop?’

  ‘I’m fine, old chap. Just wet through. It’s all right for you young ones, you don’t feel it like us old warriors. Now get us to a bar double quick.’

  Rory drove them back into Cronagh, pulling up finally outside a bar grandiosely entitled in red and white neon Finnegan’s Exclusive American Cocktail Lounge. Inside it was definitely not as advertised, being dimly lit, poorly furnished and fogged with a thick pall of cigarette and pipe smoke. It wasn’t particularly busy, although, as Anthony said to his son while they waited to get served, given the number of bars in such a sparsely populated town it was a testimony to the natives’ drinking abilities that so many pubs were able to trade at all.

  ‘Soft auld day,’ the man next to them at the bar said, with a sideways nod of his head.

  ‘Dirty old day,’ Anthony replied, knowing the score.

  ‘Ah well,’ his neighbour sighed, sucking at his pipe. ‘There’s a lot worse to come. How was your pal Sean?’

  ‘Big a rogue as ever,’ Anthony said, as if the man’s question had been anticipated.

  ‘Trying to sell you that dammety auld gelding again. As if you hadn’t seen enough of it.’

  Anthony smiled and took a sip of his Paddy Powers. ‘Will you join us?’ he asked.

  ‘I’ll have a John Jameson,’ his neighbour said.

  ‘A John Jameson for my friend here,’ Anthony directed the tall poker-faced barman.

  ‘Large, Donal,’ his neighbour added.

  ‘As if I would not,’ the barman intoned, as if saying Mass.

  ‘And from a fresh bottle, too.’

  ‘I have no fresh bottles, Michael.’

  ‘You have so. Under here.’ Michael tapped the bar then nodded his head once to underline his point. ‘I like my whisky without the water, Donal.’

  ‘And don’t I know?’

  ‘So let’s have it out of a fresh bottle then.’

  ‘There are plenty of other bars, Michael Doherty.’

  ‘And aren’t they all run by your relatives? Now do the decent thing, Donal, and show our guest here your good manners.’

  The squabble finally over, the four of them drank, the landlord pouring himself a generous ball of malt from the freshly opened bottle. He charged Anthony for it, but Anthony knew better than to protest, since he knew from experience that there were plenty of free ones in the offing now a new bottle had been broached.

  Some time later he found himself being advised by Michael to go to see a very particular horse. Michael had laid his head on the bar with his face turned towards Anthony, and was doing his best to focus on his drinking partner.

  ‘Padraig Flanagan has him,’ he said in a stage whisper. ‘But shh! No one’s to know I’m telling you that.’

  ‘’Tis a fine horse Padraig has so!’ a voice from somewhere down the bar assured Anthony. ‘A man’d have no one at home not to go and see it now.’

  ‘Don’t you go sayin’ I’m sending you,’ Michael said from his semi-recumbent position. ‘He’ll be thinkin’ I’m after the finders.’

  ‘That’s finders as in keepers, right?’ Anthony wondered with a frown, trying desperately not to let go.

  ‘Finders as in fee, friend,’ Michael replied, before rolling off his seat and sinking slowly to the floor.

  By now Rory had the flavour too, and was sitting happily smiling at his reflection in the far from clean mirror over the bar. Anthony took him by the shoulder, but it seemed Rory wasn’t that keen to move, turning round to his father and putting a finger to an area near his lips.

  ‘Shh!’ he advised. ‘There are people sleeping here.’

  ‘Come on, chum,’ Anthony said, keeping hold of him with one hand and searching for his car keys in his pocket with the other. ‘We’re off to see a horse.’

  ‘Ye’ll not be driving yerselves, so you won’t,’ an enormous man in a large brown overcoat warned him, taking the keys from his hand. ‘Ye’re in no fit state to take ahold the wheel. I shall drive to Padraig’s.’

  ‘And you reckon you are?’ Anthony asked him, trying to draw himself up to his full height but still finding himself a good foot shorter than the giant swaying over him. ‘In a fit state to drive, that is?’

  ‘I am not, for I have drink taken,’ the giant replied. ‘But there’s no need for concern on my behalf, man. There’ll be no problem if the Garda stop me.’

  ‘I see,’ Anthony said, scratching his head. ‘And I wonder why would that be, chummy?’

  ‘Because I have no driving licence,’ the giant said. ‘Now come along, man, and show me to your vehicular.’

  Realising he himself was far too drunk to drive, let alone make any sense, Anthony followed the large man out of the bar, dragging Rory with him, and pointed out the red hire car parked immediately outside. His chauffeur nodded and got in the back seat.

  ‘I thought you were going to drive.’

  ‘I am so,’ the man replied. ‘Where’s your problem?’

  ‘I’ve always found it easier to do that from the front seat.’ Anthony opened the driver’s door with an exaggerated bow.r />
  ‘I have not me spectacles, man. I have them lost,’ the giant told him, shoehorning himself into the driver’s seat with some difficulty, being far too tall for the economy-size vehicle, and trying without much success to get the key in the ignition. Anthony took the ring from him and, after encountering a similar problem, realised they were his house keys rather than the car keys. Finding the right ones in Rory’s pocket, he managed to get the engine started, pushed his swaying son into the back, went round to the front passenger seat, slammed the door shut on his coat and nodded to the man hunched over the wheel.

  ‘Full steam ahead, captain,’ he said. ‘Full steam ahead.’

  ‘You shall have to direct me, man,’ the giant said, unable to lift his head properly. ‘You’ll have to indicate the route for I find it hard to see the road in front.’

  ‘You can actually drive, old man?’

  ‘Indeed I can. I have been drivin’ vehiculars since I was a gossoon.’

  ‘Motor vehiculars?’

  ‘All manner of vehiculars. Now then – how are we doing?’

  ‘We are doing fine,’ Anthony replied. ‘Just fine. But that’s probably because we’re still stationary.’

  The giant crashed the stick into third gear and the car lurched off very slowly.

  ‘You’re on the pavement, old chap,’ Anthony said, having cleared a patch of condensation off his window. ‘Apparently headed for a chemist’s.’

  He leaned over and corrected the steering in time to return the car to the mercifully empty road.

  ‘That is a sensible thing you are doing here, man,’ his driver told him. ‘You make sure to do that now if I go a little off beam.’

  ‘Perhaps it’d be better if I did the driving entirely,’ Anthony suggested.

  ‘You should have thought of that before you started the drinking,’ the giant replied. ‘But then you still may, of course, provided you are content to spend the rest of your day in gaol.’

  ‘The rest of my day? For being drunk at the wheel?’