‘Told you I was the champion,’ she said. ‘It’s a hard school, the Cronagh Cat’s Cradlers. All-Ireland champions.’
Rory smiled shyly back at her, took the small ball of baling twine into which Kathleen had restored the cradle and pocketed it, finding himself vowing like a child never to part with it ever again, whatever happened.
Kathleen cleared her throat, tidied her hair with her hands and checked the bolts on Boyo’s stable door.
‘OK,’ she said, a word that seemed to Rory to be her mantra. ‘Better get back to what I was doing, then.’
Rory said nothing. He just watched her as she began to sweep and tidy the yard as automatically as if she was back home in Cork. He watched her check the water buckets and the bolts on all the stable doors when she was done sweeping, and he watched her as she put her broom away, dusted her hands together and stood with arms akimbo surveying the now immaculate yard.
‘I can’t offer you a j-j-job,’ he said finally, picking up the smallest piece of straw imaginable and handing it to her with a straight face.
‘Can’t think how I missed that,’ she returned, equally straight-faced.
‘I w-wish I could.’ Rory nodded. ‘Offer you a j-job. But we can’t afford it.’
‘Did I axe for a job?’ she said wide-eyed, thickening her brogue deliberately. ‘I don’t remember doing so.’
‘You just came here to see the horse,’ Rory offered, and then immediately regretted doing so when he saw the flash in Kathleen’s green eyes.
‘I did not come here looking for a job, as you call it, Mr Rawlins,’ she all but snapped. ‘I have a job at home, as you well know.’
‘Sure.’ Rory held his hands up in mock innocence. ‘You were just passing through.’
Kathleen glared at him, but in truth she was more angry with herself than she was with him. She would have loved to tell him the truth, and not just the truth but the entire truth, because there was nothing Kathleen hated more than deceit, yet she knew she could not, for more reasons than just the one, so she had to bite her tongue and put up with what she saw as his facetiousness. She knew he knew that she had not just been passing through, as she had so lamely tried to convince him, but she knew that even if she told him a bit of the truth, that she had dreamed this terrible thing about her horse, that she had seen him sick and dying and that the dream had been as vivid and as potent as reality, she knew he would just think what she thought they all thought about the Irish, that they were full of nothing but whimsy and away with the fairies. So she put up and shut up, deciding to live in hope that what she wanted so much to happen might indeed happen, and she could somehow manage to stay here at Fulford Farm and look after a horse that although no longer hers would always belong to her in her heart as long as they both should live.
‘Of course,’ Rory began, twisting the ball of twine round his fingers out of sight in his pocket. ‘Of course if you wanted to stay on for a while – see how your horse does – there’d certainly be no objections.’
Kathleen frowned but didn’t say anything immediately. She looked past Rory into the distance and tried to work out how best to accept this invitation without making it seem that it was precisely what she had come for.
‘OK,’ she decided. ‘But there’s a proviso. If I was to do that – for a while, to see how Boyo does and all – if I were to do that I would have to work for my keep – and for nothing.’
‘Yes – well, as I just s-said,’ Rory replied, trying to keep the glee out of his voice, ‘there wouldn’t be any question of mm-my paying you because there’s nothing in that particular ker-ker-ker – kitty. You’d be looked after all right. I mean it might look a bit frayed at the edges, this place, but it’s very comfortable. And warm. And of course you’d be able to keep an eye right on your horse.’
‘Your horse, Mr Rawlins.’
‘Fine. The horse, then. You’d be able to keep an eye on the horse.’
She turned her attention back to him, looking him once more directly in the eyes. Rory met the look and held her eyes with his. Even so, in spite of his determination, he found he dropped his first.
‘Done deal,’ Kathleen said. She pretended to spit on her hand and offered it to Rory, who took it and held it for as long as he dared.
‘OK,’ she repeated. ‘But when Boyo gets better—’
‘Yes.’ Rory stopped her. ‘If and when, which of course he will.’
‘God willing,’ Kathleen added. ‘So when he does—’
‘Let’s cross that one when we come to it, shall we? That particular whatever,’ Rory cut in. ‘So now we’ve a deal, I’d better show you around and get you s-s-s-settled in.’
As they walked away together, behind her back Kathleen gave Boyo, who she knew was watching, the thumbs-up.
As soon as Rory had finished the full guided tour, including the rooms in a warm and comfortable little groom’s cottage at the end of the yard, Kathleen set about her work. First, she saw to her horse, standing him in another box while she took his stable apart, disinfecting every inch of it, changing his bedding over to wood shavings – a supply of which Rory managed to scrounge from a friendly neighbouring trainer until he could get a full delivery – and washing out his mangers with boiling water. Then she disinfected his hay net and all the woodwork including the outside of the doors and windows, before finally giving the horse a thorough wash-down followed by a top-to-tail grooming. When that was done she went to find Rory, who was in his office checking the entries for his horses.
‘If you don’t mind my asking, Mr Rawlins,’ she said, ‘how often do you turn him out? Boyo, that is.’
‘Well, I don’t at the moment,’ Rory replied, looking up from his paperwork in some surprise. ‘If it’s fine on Sundays some of them get run in the paddocks, but being short-handed and nearly in winter now we don’t have the time or the m-manpower to clean off mud-covered horses.’
‘But he needs to run out every day,’ she told him. ‘He always has. It’s something he’s been used to.’
‘While he was growing, perhaps.’
‘We run ours out even when they’re in work.’
‘As I just said, Miss Flanagan—’
‘Kathleen.’
‘As I just said, I don’t have the – the – the—’
He knew perfectly well what he wanted to say, but the more he found himself looking at Kathleen the harder he found it to speak.
‘I’m sure you could make an exception in his case,’ she chipped in. ‘It’s what he needs. Look, I’ll rug him up and I’ll clean him off when he comes in. He really won’t do good standing in all day like this.’
‘We’ll try it,’ Rory agreed. ‘But if anything happens—’
‘Nothing will happen,’ Kathleen replied, and finding himself rewarded with a smile Rory at once felt it had been not only the right but the only decision to take. ‘Are you expecting someone?’ Kathleen went on, having seen something through the office window. ‘It seems you have a visitor.’
Rory got up to take a look for himself and saw a battered old yellow VW Beetle with blackened windows and a sawnoff exhaust pulling noisily up in a cloud of smoke and dust at the edge of the parking area. Barely had it stopped before the driver’s window was wound down and the end of a cigarette flicked away by the still unseen driver. For a moment no one got out, then all at once the door was kicked open and one hand appeared to be hooked backwards over the edge of the car’s roof where it remained while the fingers drummed out a brief tattoo. Finally someone emerged from the interior, a lean, athletic young man in oddly old-fashioned riding breeches, well-worn tan half-boots, an off-yellow anorak over a thin black polo-neck sweater, and aviator-style dark glasses.
The young man stretched, yawned, stretched again, and raising his dark glasses briefly, looked round the yard to see if there was any sign of life. Not yet having spotted Rory watching him from the office he kicked the door of his car closed with a backward shove of one foot then sauntered casually round t
he yard, peering into the boxes with his hands clasped behind him like a cleric.
Unable to contain his curiosity any longer, Rory stole out of the office and crept up on his visitor until he was right behind him.
‘Can I help you?’ he said suddenly, hoping at the very least to startle the young man. But far from being disconcerted, the stranger turned slowly round to face Rory, nodded, smiled and held out a hand.
‘Mr Rawlins,’ he said, in a lilting Irish brogue, as a statement of fact rather than as an enquiry. ‘Blaze Molloy. How you doing?’
‘Blaze Molloy?’ Rory returned, shaking the black-gloved hand. ‘Yes? So what can I do for you?’
‘They said you might be looking for a rider,’ Blaze said, walking on uninvited ahead of Rory to resume his inspection of the horses. ‘And since I have meself just moved in near to this very locality—’
‘Who said I might be needing a rider?’
‘The grapevine, Mr Rawlins,’ the young man replied, putting both hands up as if in surrender but continuing his stroll.
‘What sort of rider did you have in mind?’ Rory called after him.
‘Work rider, race rider, stable jockey – anything that’s going.’
‘I can’t afford to take any more work riders, sorry,’ Rory said. ‘I’m afraid you’re wasting your time.’
Blaze went on walking, apparently unperturbed. ‘Word has it you bought a nice horse from Padraig Flanagan,’ he called back. ‘Might I see him?’
‘No, not really,’ Rory said, catching up with him. ‘He’s not receiving visitors.’
‘Not well, is he?’
‘Had a dirty nose. Nothing serious.’
‘Is that him? In the box down there?’ Blaze pointed towards the horse’s isolation stable and headed there before Rory could stop him.
‘How did you know I’d bought a horse from Padraig Flanagan?’ he asked when he caught the young man up.
‘There’s always talk when a horse crosses the water, Mr Rawlins, so there is,’ Blaze replied. ‘Particularly when it’s to a betting yard.’
‘This is not a betting yard. At least not when I’m in charge.’
‘Rumour always was that your father liked a touch.’
‘My father is in hospital at the moment.’
‘I’m sorry to hear that.’ Blaze turned to him, fixing him with a look of genuine sympathy. ‘I hope it’s not anything serious.’
‘He had a heart attack,’ Rory replied. ‘And now he has a secondary infection.’
‘Then may God help him,’ Blaze said sincerely. ‘He’ll be in my prayers so. Now let’s have a look at this horse of yours.’
‘I’d rather you didn’t disturb him, Mr Molloy,’ Rory said.
‘Blaze, please,’ the young man insisted. ‘And disturb him is the last thing I’ll do.’
Rory sighed and stood by the half-open stable door while his uninvited visitor cast his eye over the horse.
‘Not a lot of him,’ Blaze observed. ‘But he’s got a good backside – and I hear he has a bit of a leap in him. Good legs too. And not far off racing I’d say, either. Long as he’s well in himself.’
‘I don’t need a work rider, Mr Molloy, thanks all the same,’ Rory said, closing the stable up behind the jockey.
‘I’ll ride work for nothing, sir. Not even the petrol.’
‘Why would you want to do that?’
‘Because I would, because of what I’ve heard about him,’ Blaze replied, now dropping his laconic manner and becoming serious. ‘Look, Mr Rawlins – I’ll ride all the work you want in return for the ride. The first ride, mind. Just the first ride. I’m not asking for all of them. Let me ride his first race for you, that’s all I’m asking.’
‘I’m sorry,’ Rory replied. ‘I don’t know anything about you. I don’t even know if you can ride.’
‘I can ride, Mr Rawlins, and if you let me ride the horse I’ll win on him, for sure I will,’ Blaze informed him, taking off his sunglasses and regarding Rory with large bright eyes the colour of cornflowers. ‘And when I do, you’ll want me to go on riding him, I promise you.’
‘Do I look like a lemon? I don’t know a thing about you, Mr Molloy,’ Rory repeated. ‘You could be the worst rider in Ireland for all I know.’
‘No, he’s certainly not that,’ Kathleen’s voice said behind Rory. ‘He’s not that at all, Mr Rawlins. They say this is a lad who’s really going places.’
Rory turned round to stare at Kathleen and found her staring at Blaze.
‘You two know each other?’ he enquired.
‘I don’t know Mr Molloy,’ Kathleen said. ‘Not personally. But I know of him.’
‘Then how do you know his name?’ Rory frowned at her.
‘I was – I was eavesdropping, I’m afraid,’ Kathleen confessed. ‘I’m afraid I was born nosy.’
‘And you are?’ Blaze asked, staring back at Kathleen.
‘Kathleen Flanagan. Padraig Flanagan’s daughter.’
‘So you are,’ Blaze said quietly. ‘Is that right now? So you are, so you are.’
‘I think this is utter – what do you call it? Blarney. Utter blarney. This is complete and utter blarney,’ Rory protested. ‘So you are – is that right now – yes you are. So you are, so you are.’
‘Mr Molloy rides point to point, Mr Rawlins. And hunter chases.’
‘Ah, but I have a proper licence this season, Miss Flanagan,’ Blaze said. ‘I can ride conditional.’
‘I can vouch for his riding, Mr Rawlins,’ Kathleen said. ‘I saw him ride a grand double at Tramore in the spring.’
‘But only point to point,’ Rory said, becoming slowly aware of how the two were still regarding each other. ‘Mr Molloy here is proposing himself to ride under Rules – and n-n-not only that – he’s proposing he rides your horse here.’
‘No, your horse, Mr Rawlins,’ Kathleen corrected him. ‘And you could do a lot worse,’ she said.
‘You won’t do better, sir,’ Blaze said with a sudden broad smile, taking off his cap and shaking out a head of curling blond hair. ‘You wait and see.’
‘If anyone else tells me to do that today,’ Rory sighed, ‘I shall give all this up and take up market ger-ger – gardening. Dammit, look – all right. Look, I’ll put you up on something tomorrow – but only to see if you’re as good as you seem to be saying you are – and when I’ve seen how you ride work, maybe I’ll let you know my decision then.’
‘God, now, that’s fair enough,’ Blaze said. ‘God, thanks. God, that’ll do me nicely.’
‘I should think it is fair enough,’ Rory muttered before turning his back. ‘And you can leave G-God out of it.’
‘So now tell me about yourself,’ he heard Blaze saying to Kathleen as they walked away together. ‘And how come and God knows why we’ve never met before.’
‘Dunkum?’ Rory called to his dog. ‘Get in the car, boy – I don’t know about you but I need a good long walk.’
By the time Rory had returned from a three mile point on Salisbury Plain, he was happy to see that Blaze Molloy had gone from the yard, just as he was happy to see that the yard was looking altogether smarter and tidier now that he had not only an extra pair of hands at work but hands that belonged to the skilled, devoted and beautiful Kathleen Flanagan. The clocks had long gone back so twilight was already setting in, the yard illuminated now only by the lights from the feed and tack rooms and those on the outside walls of the stables. Rory stopped and looked round him and thought what an oddly pleasing and happy sight it was, a racing yard at the time of evening stables, the horses all exercised and fed and most of them standing dozing happily at the doors of their boxes, or quietly munching a mouthful of fresh hay, while the stable cats stood stretching their backs and yawning in the anticipation of a good evening’s mouse-hunting. Tonight all was quiet with not a horse kicking a door, the silence broken only by an occasional snort of equine satisfaction or the sound of one of them shaking itself after a good roll in its bedding. He had
always enjoyed evening stables, ever since he was a boy, but now he was actually in charge he found he was deriving an even deeper sense of contentment from walking round the boxes, checking all the occupants and seeing them settled for the evening.
‘Strange,’ he said to himself as he made his way to the most important box on his round. ‘I could be in Florence painting, doing the thing I do best, the thing I always wanted to do – and yet here I am, and really not minding at all. Which is really very odd altogether.’
He looked over The Enchanted’s door and to his relief saw that the little horse was at his manger, which he was busy licking clean. The horse cocked an eye at him then returned to his pot-scouring, his tail swishing occasionally as he searched vainly for one last mouthful. Having checked the rest of the yard Rory wandered over to the tack room and found Kathleen there in company of Teddy, cleaning saddles and bridles that now looked like new.
‘Want a mug of tea, boss?’ Teddy asked him. ‘Kettle’s just boiled.’
Rory accepted the offer and sat down opposite the two of them, picking up a racing saddle and beginning to clean it.
‘This mysterious visitor of ours, Miss Flanagan – Kathleen,’ he said, quickly correcting himself as he dipped a piece of sponge into a tin of saddle soap. ‘What more do you know about him?’
‘No more than I said, really,’ Kathleen replied, glancing up at him from her work. ‘He’s made a bit of a name for himself riding point to point in the south-west – in Cork – and of course he rode in the Foxhunters at Cheltenham this year.’
‘Did he finish? How did he do?’
‘He was fifth, on one of Red Turvey’s runners. I didn’t see the race, but they say it was a good enough effort. He led for most of the race and he caught the eye enough to get a mention in the press.’
‘And he wants to ride over here now professionally,’ Rory said, wondering why. ‘Rather than over there.’
‘So it would seem, Mr Rawlins,’ Kathleen replied, polishing the saddle on her knee. ‘But then don’t most Irish jocks come over sooner rather than later? There’s a lot of opportunity and the pay’s better, too.’
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