‘The bus, the train, the ferry,’ she said to herself. ‘Then a train again and possibly another bus. Then a bus, a train and the ferry, then a train and then the bus.’ She regarded the cash she was holding. ‘That’ll never be enough – not when you account for refreshments and emergencies.’
She withdrew the box again, took out some more money and stared at it.
‘Ah, to hell and high water anyway.’ She sighed. ‘Might as well be hung for the sheep as well as the lamb. And who cares? If Boyo needs me I most certainly don’t.’
The train to Cork was overcrowded, and the ferry to Fishguard full of nuns and people returning to what they liked to call the mainland. Kathleen avoided the bars, and sat with the nuns who, when they heard the reason for her journey, offered prayers to St Francis for her little horse. Then, after another two long and crowded train journeys, first to Bristol then on to Salisbury, and finally a taxi ride, Kathleen finally arrived at Fulford Farm.
‘I’m looking for Mr Rawlins,’ she informed a curious Teddy, who was leaning on his broom when she walked into the yard. ‘Would you know where he might be, please?’
Teddy continued to stare for a moment at the apparition before him. Her clothes might be poor, but he couldn’t remember ever seeing a more beautiful girl than the one standing staring at him so solemnly.
‘You could try the office, miss,’ he finally advised, after a small pause during which he wondered if he had ever seen a greener pair of eyes, or a darker and more lustrous head of hair. ‘Shall you wish – that is, shall I take you – I mean, show you?’
‘You’re so much more than kind,’ Kathleen replied, picking up her small suitcase. ‘Thank you.’
‘It’s nothing, miss. Let me carry that for you.’ He took her case and with a doff of his flat cap and a quick shy smile he led the way to the guv’nor’s office. They found Rory sitting staring into space, having just come off the telephone to his bank manager.
‘What is it, Teddy?’ he asked, seeing just the lad standing in the doorway. ‘Didn’t anyone tell you it’s rude to interrupt a suicide?’
‘There’s someone here to see you, Guv,’ Teddy replied. ‘A young lady.’
‘Wouldn’t make much difference if it was Julia Roberts, chum,’ Rory told him. ‘Altogether in the altogether.’
‘It isn’t she, Mr Rawlins,’ a soft voice said from behind Teddy. ‘I’m quite fully dressed, too.’
Rory looked up and could hardly believe what he saw.
‘Miss Flanagan, isn’t it?’ he said incredulously. ‘Miss Flanagan? Surely not.’
‘I should have telephoned you,’ Kathleen said, her well-prepared excuse at the ready. ‘I would have done too,’ she lied, ‘had the lines not been blown down in a terrible storm.’
‘So, what – what can I do for you?’ Rory was almost at a loss for words as he stared at the beautiful young woman standing in front of him. ‘What are you doing here?’
‘I’ve come to see the horse,’ Kathleen replied. ‘That’s why I’m here.’
‘You – you’ve come all the way from Ireland just to see your horse?’ Rory stammered, finding himself reduced to the helplessness he used to feel as a boy when confronted by pretty girls.
‘I have, Mr Rawlins. If you’ve no objections.’
‘Nobody from here – nobody telephoned you, did they?’ Rory suddenly remembered the new incumbent’s present ill health. He turned to his secretary, who was busy at work in the other corner of the office. ‘Maureen—’
‘No one has called anyone in Ireland from here, Rory,’ she replied. ‘At least not to my knowledge.’
‘No good looking at me, Guv,’ Teddy said. ‘I wouldn’t know who to ring.’
‘And why should they, Mr Rawlins?’ Kathleen asked, all innocence. ‘Is there something wrong?’
‘No,’ Rory faltered. ‘I mean, yes, but nothing really wrong as in the horse being ill. It’s just – it’s just he’s not eating. We can’t get him to eat.’
‘Not at all?’ Kathleen asked, concerned.
‘He’s barely gone near his manger for a week. Is he prone to this sort of thing?’
‘He never left an oat at home, Mr Rawlins. Always got to the bottom of the pot.’
‘The vet can’t find anything wrong.’
‘He wouldn’t. The horse is homesick.’
‘Homesick?’ Rory repeated in astonishment. ‘Did you say – did you say homesick?’
‘I did so,’ Kathleen assured him. ‘Do you find that so astonishing? It happens all the time, bringing horses over here. They call it Irishitis. Or rather you do. We don’t. We call it homesickness.’
‘Really.’ Rory half got up from his seat then sat back down again with a deep frown on his face. ‘Really.’
‘Horses have feelings, Mr Rawlins. Same as you and me. I wonder if I could see him? I don’t have a lot of time. I’d like to be back home again by tomorrow morning, before my father finds me gone.’
Rory shook his head and frowned even more deeply, utterly thrown by this turn of events.
‘I can’t b-b-believe you came all this way on a whim. J-j-just to see your horse.’
‘It wasn’t a whim.’
‘Well – what-what-whatever,’ Rory said, gritting his teeth and closing his eyes against his suddenly returned stammer, an affliction he had thought he was by now well rid of. ‘Yes, of course you can see the horse – your horse. Yes, of c-c-c-course you ker-ker-ker-ker—’ He stopped and clicked his finger and thumb together, as taught by his therapist. ‘Of course you can,’ he said slowly. ‘I’ll show him to you myself. Not that I think you’ll learn much by l-l-l-looking.’
‘No, Mr Rawlins,’ Kathleen replied. ‘But he might learn something be seeing.’
The horse was standing in a back corner of his box, facing the wall as if he was a dunce with a cap on his head. Kathleen watched him for a moment from the door, noting how tucked up he was and out of sorts with himself. After a few seconds, as she knew he would, the little horse turned his head slowly to look at her, which was when Kathleen put her hand over the top of the door and held it out, palm upwards.
‘Doubt if that will work. He’s been refusing treats all week,’ Rory assured her.
‘I’m not offering him a treat,’ Kathleen replied. ‘Just my hand. Just me.’ She kept her hand outstretched and the horse returned to staring into the corner.
‘This is how he’s been for days,’ Rory said. ‘Won’t go near anything or anyone.’
‘Boyo?’ Kathleen called quietly, then spoke to him in Gaelic. Still the horse didn’t move.
‘S-see what I mean?’ Rory said.
‘I think we have to be patient, Mr Rawlins. Really we do.’
A few minutes later the horse slowly swished his tail, after Kathleen had spoken to him some more in Gaelic.
‘I don’t speak any Gaelic so you’ll have to help me out here,’ Rory muttered. ‘About all I know is Aer Lingus.’
‘Sure even if you did, you mightn’t know what to say to him. He’s far from himself, you can see that. Look. Look into his eyes for yourself now – look at his sadness.’
‘His – sadness?’ Rory repeated. ‘Do horses get sad?’
‘And why shouldn’t they now?’ Kathleen chided him. ‘The horse is pining. Perhaps if I could fetch him a fresh feed he might just eat. Particularly if I put some of this Guinness in it. I didn’t know whether you would have any so I brought some over with me just in case,’ she added, taking a bottle out of her overnight bag. ‘Might I use your feed room?’
Rory showed her the way, and she prepared a mixture exactly to her recipe, adding the Guinness last of all.
‘He likes a drop of stout,’ Kathleen told Rory, carrying the manger back to the stable. ‘He always has, ever since he was a nipper.’
As Rory opened the stable door, for the first time the horse turned right round and came over to greet Kathleen. Kathleen at once put up a hand to touch him and to stroke his neck, and when she did so
the horse pricked his ears and shook himself thoroughly, as if awakening from a sleep.
‘At least he can still walk,’ Rory said. ‘He’s hardly m-moved for a week.’
‘He’s a sick horse, Mr Rawlins. Think about it. It’s a big thing, leaving the place where you’re born, being shoved in a lorry and then on a boat – things you know nothing of, with people and horses not known to you. Wouldn’t you expect him to get sick?’
The horse now lowered his head slightly, both eyes watching Kathleen. She put one hand up to pull one of his ears. After a moment he took a deep breath and seemed to sigh. Then he shook himself again, slowly at first, but then faster and faster until it seemed to turn into a full-scale tremor.
‘That’s better, Boyo. You’ll be better now,’ Kathleen told him as she walked round him and put his manger in the corner holder. ‘So now you be a good boy and eat up every last bit, you hear me? Every bit now.’
‘Or else,’ Rory said, trying to lighten the mood, ‘it’s s-straight to bed and no ster-ster – no story.’
‘You may laugh, Mr Rawlins, but it’s not funny really, what they like and don’t like,’ Kathleen said, coming out of the stable, closing the half-door and bolting it. ‘Let’s leave him now. He likes to eat in peace.’
Rory frowned again, giving her another away-with-the-fairies look behind her back, yet he did as he was bidden, following Kathleen away from the stable. He couldn’t, however, resist a look over his shoulder to see how the horse was doing.
‘You shouldn’t,’ Kathleen warned him. ‘You’ll put him off, I promise.’
‘He’s eating.’
‘He’d rather be left in peace, really he would. And if it’s all the same to you, I wouldn’t say no to a cup of tea. I haven’t had a thing since I changed at Bristol.’
‘I don’t know wh-what I was thinking,’ Rory said, finding to his dismay not only that he had started stammering again but that the blush he had suffered at Sandown was not a one-off. ‘In fact, why don’t I get you something to eat? You must be ster-ster-ster—’
‘I am,’ Kathleen said with a smile. ‘Not even half starved. Totally.’
Rory nodded and led the way into the house, where he made not only a cup of tea for both of them but a cooked breakfast of eggs, crisp bacon and fried potatoes for Kathleen. She ate in near total silence.
‘If you feed your horses as well as you fed me, won’t you be winning everything?’ she told him when she had finished, gratefully accepting a second cup of tea.
‘Yes, but I’d love to know what really brought you over, Miss Flanagan,’ Rory said as Kathleen got up and started to clear away. ‘And you can leave that, really you can.’
‘I wouldn’t hear of it,’ Kathleen replied. ‘The mess you make you clear. And didn’t I tell you? I came over to see the horse.’
‘Ber-ber—’ Rory stopped and scratched his head. ‘Because?’
‘You’d laugh if I told you, so I won’t. Where do you keep your tea towels, please?’
Rory handed her one automatically, then scratched his head again.
‘Did you know something was wrong?’ he finally wondered. ‘You wouldn’t travel all the way over here – you’d her-her – hardly come all this way and at great expense just to s-see the horse. Would you?’
‘Don’t you ever have feelings, Mr Rawlins?’ Kathleen wondered, turning round and looking at him directly with the brightest pair of green eyes Rory had ever seen. ‘Some people do, you know. They have feelings – and that’s exactly what I had.’
‘A f-feeling? A pre-pre-premonition?’
‘I said you’d laugh.’
‘I’m not laughing.’
‘You’re smiling. The overture to a laugh. Yes I had a feeling Boyo wasn’t right, and you can make what you will of it.’
‘You could have written,’ Rory argued. ‘If the telephone lines were down—’
‘Which indeed they were,’ Kathleen said in quick defence.
‘I’m just trying to save you money, Miss Flanagan.’
‘It’s a little late for that, Mr Rawlins. Anyway, I consider it well spent. And talking of that, I have some trains and boats to catch,’ she added, glancing at the kitchen clock.
‘I think it was mer-mer-mer—’ Rory stopped and snapped finger and thumb behind his back. ‘I think it was very good of you to come over. I think it was a terrific thing to do.’
Kathleen looked at him with her head on one side, then nodded.
‘Thanks,’ she said. ‘But you see, if I’d written and say you hadn’t written back because you thought the horse just wasn’t eating and would get over it—’
‘Which he would have done, eventually.’
‘You can lose the best part of a season, Mr Rawlins. While a horse – while it acclimatises itself.’
‘So it was just as well you came,’ Rory agreed. ‘I really do believe that.’
‘OK. Right. Would you ever run me to the station, please?’
‘I’ll take you back all the way if you like,’ Rory offered. ‘To F-Fishguard if you want.’
‘That’s really kind, thank you, but I have my tickets.’
‘Let me at least run you to Bristol. Save you that change at least.’
‘OK. Right. Thanks.’
Before he left he put his head round the office door to tell Maureen where he was going.
‘If anyone rings,’ he added, ‘tell them I’ll be ber-ber-berber—’ He stopped and closed his eyes, waiting for the block to pass. When he opened them he found Maureen frowning at him.
‘I know,’ he said. ‘It’s just come back. Don’t ask me – I don’t know. It’ll go away again. I don’t know what b-b-b-brought it on. Anyway, tell anyone who rings or c-calls I’ll be back in a couple of hours. Say three. OK?’
Maureen agreed. After Rory had gone she glanced out of the window that overlooked the yard and when she saw Kathleen waiting for him, Maureen nodded to herself, taking a pretty good guess as to why Rory’s long-absent stammer had so suddenly returned.
‘I’m sorry about your mother,’ Rory said to Kathleen in the car as they began to talk. ‘Must have been very hard, her dying when you were that young.’
‘Two’s no age to be an orphan,’ Kathleen replied, but without an ounce of self-pity. ‘No, it was hard on everyone. Particularly the da. My father. They were childhood sweethearts.’
‘I thought my father would never get over it – when my mother died. She died in a train accident eight years ago.’
‘Jeeze,’ Kathleen said, looking round at him sharply. ‘Losing someone like that, in an accident – it’s unthinkable. Do you have brothers and sisters?’
‘I’ve a sister,’ Rory replied. ‘An older sister.’
‘Right,’ Kathleen agreed. ‘But nothing really helps, does it? Not that I’d know, because I don’t remember my mother. But my brother does and it hit him hard. And now there’s your father lying in hospital—’
‘At least he’s back with us,’ Rory said, stopping at some traffic lights beside a cider factory. ‘The der – the doctors thought he wasn’t going to make it, but then they don’t know how tough the old man is. Take more than a couple of heart attacks to see him off.’
He turned and smiled at Kathleen but she wasn’t looking at him. She was staring far into the beyond.
‘I’ll have a Mass said for him when I get back,’ she said as Rory moved the car off from the lights.
‘That’s very good of you. Thanks. Really.’
‘Anyway,’ Kathleen continued, now giving Rory her full attention. ‘We got Boyo eating all right.’
‘You did.’
‘He’ll be fine now,’ she assured him. ‘Did you see he has the prophet’s thumb on him?’
‘That impression, you mean, on his neck?’
Kathleen nodded. ‘You know about the prophet’s thumb, right? The prophet was said to have marked all the best horses with his thumb, which is why horses with the prophet’s thumb always win. Which they do.’<
br />
‘As long as they don’t stop eating again,’ Rory returned.
‘He won’t,’ Kathleen told him. ‘Particularly if you put this on – I near as anything forgot.’
She produced a tape from her bag, pushed it into the cassette player and turned it on. Moments later the sound of a lyric Irish tenor filled the car.
‘Who’s this?’ Rory enquired. ‘And why?’
‘’Tis only John McCormack, our most famous tenor. I near as anything forgot to give it you. You’re to play him this now—’
‘By him I t-take it you mean your horse?’
‘Your horse, Mr Rawlins. Yes, you’re to play him this,’ she continued as factually as if she was telling Rory what food to give him. ‘You’re to play him this continuously and he’ll think he’s back at home. My father’s forever singing John McCormack in the yard.’
‘I suppose I’ll be lighting peat fires next.’
‘Do you have an Irish lad on the place?’
Rory shook his head but more to stop himself from laughing in delight than in disagreement. ‘I’ve a Welsh one,’ he said. ‘Think the horse will know the d-d-difference?’
‘Don’t be silly, with all due respect, of course he will.’ Kathleen sighed. ‘I’m serious now. Horses are no different from us. They miss the sounds of home as well. So make sure he gets a good daily dose of John McCormack and you won’t look backwards again.’
Rory just drove for a while, happy enough to be in Kathleen’s company and perfectly content to listen to the music of the greatest Irish tenor of all time.
‘If you ever want a job over here,’ he finally said when the cassette had finished playing the first side, ‘I mean I know you’re wanted at home—’
‘No, I’m needed there, Mr Rawlins. As you know, we’re not exactly overstaffed, and I’m afraid I’d be missed. But thanks for the offer, OK?’
‘Well, if anything changes,’ Rory concluded, ‘you know where we are. And where the horse is.’
‘Don’t you worry yourself now.’ She laughed, tossing back her head of lustrous dark hair. ‘I shan’t ever be out of touch with Boyo. Not ever.’
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