by Fiona Walker
Surfer was a gutsy, athletic horse with a lion’s heart in his narrow, ribby chest. But he had been bred and trained in Australia where the ground was hard and dusty, the light searing, the air dry. The gloomy, slippery sludge of England confused him and snatched at his confidence. Of all the riders in competition, Hugo was the bravest and most inspired. He could see a line from half a mile away, could judge pace and attack like no other. But his eyes were pinched by a hangover, his reactions dulled, his body sweating as he detoxified from two days of very heavy drinking. He couldn’t rely on his usual second-sight judgement. But still he tried, convinced that he knew the course too well to be fooled by a bit of wet weather. His arrogance was his undoing.
Listening to the tannoy, Tash, Stefan and Franny waited in the shelter of the riders’ tent with bated breath as reports came back of Hugo clearing fence after fence in record time. He went over the bullfinches without breaking Surfer’s stride, it was reported, and the tiny, malevolent crowd around the river fence were to be disappointed as the combination streaked through it without a slip.
Two easy galloping fences later and they were just four from home and well within the time limit – unheard of on such a wet day. Even Stefan, who had been the fastest so far, had been ten seconds over it.
‘If he goes clear, how close to winning will he be?’ Tash asked fretfully.
Pushing back her baseball cap, Franny looked at the board. ‘Well, Graham’s ahead by a mile, and Becky Holdsworth looks pretty unbeatable too. You’re fifth. If he gets inside the time, he’ll sneak ahead of you, I’m afraid.’ She rolled her dark-rimmed eyes.
‘Great,’ muttered Tash. ‘I hope he falls off. No one should ride that well after drinking that much.’
It was a feeble, bad-spirited joke made in a weak moment. The second she said it, she regretted it and was grateful to the others for letting it pass. It was only when the next tannoy announcement came through that she felt her heart kick out at her ribs in shame. It was the first of many, many moments in which she would re-live her bad sportsmanship and cruel wish with deep regret.
‘Hugo Beauchamp and Surfer are down at the Sunken Road in what looks like a nasty fall. They tried for the direct route and failed to make it. Horse and rider have still to get up . . .’ The microphone was muffled and, after a moment of crackling interference, fell silent.
While Franny raced out of the tent, Tash and Stefan waited for a few more seconds in case there was another announcement, but, after a long break, the PA crackled into life to warn of yet another course stoppage, inducing impatient, exasperated groans amongst those waiting for the final score.
Tash and Stefan legged it out of the tent to be met by Ted bolting the other way. He was carrying Surfer’s headcollar and a waterproof woollen blanket in anticipation of collecting him.
‘D’you know what’s going on?’ he panted. ‘I’ve just come from the stables.’
‘Hugo’s down and they’ve stopped the other riders on the course,’ Tash explained, her throat cramped with fear.
‘I know that, idiot,’ he snapped. ‘They’ve just called for the course vet – he was looking at Bod’s pastern again. Sounds like Surfer’s more than just winded.’
‘Shit!’ Stefan rubbed his spiky wet hair nervously.
‘What about Hugo?’ Tash muttered, feeling bile rise in her mouth.
But Ted and Stefan were already heading out on to the course. She raced after them, heart crashing in her chest like a hammer against an anvil.
Together they ran and stumbled towards the fence, which was almost half a mile away. There were very few spectators around as the weather was too wet and the competition too unglamorous, but those that were there were knowledgeable and experienced. They mostly knew Tash and Stefan, shaking their heads when asked whether they knew what was going on, offering concern and sympathy. An older woman with a fat spaniel on a lead was walking from the fence as they approached it, face ashen beneath her battered waterproof hat.
Lagging behind the others because she couldn’t run as fast, Tash watched as Stefan paused for a second to speak to her while Ted dashed on. As she caught up, she heard the tail end of a sentence that seemed to drain the blood from her face as surely as if her throat had been cut.
‘—lost his footing and fell back in. Smashed his spine, I think. Poor lad.’
Whimpering, Tash bolted past them, tripping on a divot and crashing to her knees in her haste, her cold face feeling more and more numb.
She could see the cluster of people around the fence now, heads bowed, shoulders slumped, an air of desolation permeating the wet air. Several course Land-Rovers and an ambulance were parked nearby. She couldn’t see Hugo anywhere.
Slithering past the deserted steward’s chair, she found Ted talking to the course organiser. His usually merry, ladsy face was a mask of tightly controlled pain as he fought tears.
‘Surfer’s had to be destroyed.’ He turned to her, eyes dead with sorrow. ‘They came at the fence too fast and he slipped. He had no hope.’
‘And Hugo?’ She could barely get the words out, her eyes darting madly around the faces nearby for his.
‘Not a scratch on him,’ Ted hissed. ‘Bastard!’
Tash burst into tears, as instant a response as screaming when one felt pain. She was deeply ashamed of her reaction but couldn’t help herself, dissolving into Ted’s arms.
Closer to the fence, there was an air of menace and misery. Officials, spectators and organisers milled around despondently. A clerk of the course was barking into a walkie-talkie and glancing at his watch.
Already on the scene, Franny was totally inconsolable. At last catching up, Stefan found her being patted rather ineffectually by a St John’s Ambulance volunteer just beside the jump, which had been screened off with make-shift wicker fencing while a tractor backed its trailer close enough to collect Surfer’s huge, motionless body, now covered with a tarpaulin. Tash looked away, her chest so heavy that it seemed to creak under the strain. Her tears now at the gulping stage, she left Ted and Stefan comforting Franny and searched for Hugo.
Even though they were thick with mud and rain, his red eventing colours stood out like a splash of blood against the sludgy landscape. Sheltering under a tree, his shoulders hunched, head hanging, he was talking quietly with two officials and a fence steward, drawing on a borrowed cigarette. She could hear the accusing tone of the officials’ voices, and the monotone bleakness of Hugo’s replies, but couldn’t make out the words. He seemed to be getting a very severe dressing down and precious little sympathy. Whatever had happened to make Surfer fall, it seemed that Hugo was being entirely blamed by those who had witnessed it.
Hovering a few metres away, Tash could see that his eyes were red from crying. She had never, ever known Hugo cry. It hadn’t seemed possible until now, and her heart crashed in pity for him. He could be a bold, bloody-minded rider, but that was why he was at the top of the tree. However rash and dangerous he had been that day, he didn’t deserve this tragedy or the blistering condemnation that followed. Eyes hollow and wild under his wet hair, he looked perilously close to cracking up.
As the officials drifted away, he suddenly gazed across to where Tash was standing, not seeming to see her at all. His helmet was in his hands, his number bib tattered, breeches black with mud and rain. A huge, angry bruise was starting to form on his right cheek and his nose had clearly been bleeding. He still had the faintest trace of a graze on his forehead from falling off the motorbike, and his cheeks were splattered with mud and blood from the nose-bleed.
Not thinking, Tash bolted forward, desperate to support him but not knowing how.
‘He’s dead, Tash.’ Hugo blinked at her forlornly, seemingly trying to get this to sink into his own head. ‘He’s dead. It was all my fucking fault – oh, Christ!’ And he buried his face in his hands.
‘Shh, shh – don’t say that.’ Tash put her arm around his shaking shoulders, and reached out her other hand to stroke his wet hair. That
hair – her fantasy. Such an awful time for a day-dream to come true. It had turned into a nightmare. There was no pleasure in the touch of it now, just desperate compassion.
The next moment he stumbled forward and, almost knocking her over with the violence of his movement, was gripping her for support, head buried in the crook of her neck, hot, rapid breathing hitting her throat. He clung there for a long time, his body trembling, eyes tightly clenched, shoulders taut, knuckles white. Then, pushing her away almost as aggressively as he had grabbed her, he turned and walked to the far side of the tree and slumped against the trunk where he couldn’t witness Surfer’s carcass being edged slowly on to the trailer.
Supervising the brave horse’s ignoble removal from the fence was hellish. What had been a trembling, excitable bundle of primed muscle and eager energy just minutes earlier, was now just half a ton of impediment which had to be swiftly and quietly removed from the course to allow the competition to continue. Realising that Hugo wasn’t up to it, Stefan and Ted waded in to let the officials know where to take him while Tash was allotted the task of getting Hugo and Franny back to the box.
The long, wet walk seemed endless. Franny couldn’t stop crying; Hugo was walking like a zombie, saying nothing, gazing ahead fixedly. They were stopped over and over again to be asked what had happened, with Tash only able to shake her head and hustle her charges on, as the slightest mention of ‘destroyed’, ‘put down’ or ‘dead’ sent Franny into complete free-fall hysteria.
Back at the box, Tash poured her a huge brandy and tried to make Hugo change out of his sodden clothes, but he just sat at the table, staring into space, surrounded by the bedding of the night before. He tried to light a cigarette, but his hands were shaking so much that he couldn’t spark the flint, finally letting Tash light it for him. As she did so, he reached out and grabbed her wrist, looking up at her with feverish eyes.
‘You don’t blame me, do you, Tash?’ he barked, sounding strangely angry and savage. ‘After all, you’re in love with me, aren’t you?’
She gaped at him in amazement, too shocked to speak. Behind her, Franny was still sobbing too loudly to hear.
‘Well, aren’t you? Christ, I thought I could at least rely on you to be loyal and wet and stick by me through this!’ He dropped his head into his hands, gloved fingers raking through wet hair.
‘I’ll pretend I never heard you say that.’ Scarlet with fury, Tash stomped back to the sobbing Franny and gave her a huge hug.
Over the next half-hour, several fellow eventers knocked on the door offering support but Tash fielded them, thanking them politely and asking them to leave it for a while. Even worse, a couple of local stringers from the papers tried to get in and talk to Hugo, muttering darkly about animal cruelty. Surprised by her own resilience, Tash booted them out and shut the curtains to stop them taking photographs.
The medicinal brandy had not been one of her wisest moves, however. Before long, Franny had stopped crying and was laying into Hugo, blaming the incident entirely on him and his reckless riding.
‘You’re such a competitive fucking idiot!’ she screamed, her eyes so puffy and bloodshot that she looked as though she’d had chlorine thrown in her face. ‘You as good as killed that horse because you wanted to win so badly and save your pride. You spoilt shit!’
Hugo didn’t respond, lighting one cigarette from the butt of another with shaking hands and staring at Tash in a desperate plea for help. He was still wearing his tatty gloves and the stopwatches on his arm were still clocking up the time from the moment he had raced out of the start box, full of hot-headed determination.
Dropping her gaze, Tash stood back, no longer willing to rush to his aid.
‘Everyone was telling you to go the safe routes,’ Franny raged on, her voice climbing. ‘But you wouldn’t sodding listen, would you? You blazed out there thinking you could sodding well conquer the world and instead you killed your horse.
You might as well have got up this morning, taken a couple of Alka-Seltzer and shot him in his stable.’
‘Shut up!’ Hugo suddenly stood up and lunged across at her, sending mugs flying from the table
But Fanny just dodged sideways and screamed on, ‘You were still pissed today, weren’t you? You went out there so blind drunk you couldn’t see straight, figuring that if Stefan could do it, so could you. You’re a disgrace to me, to your poor, doomed horses and the whole sport. And don’t bother firing me this time – I’m quitting. I wouldn’t work for you again if you trebled my wages. You’re a loser, Hugo.’
As she made to turn and leave, he bolted forward and lifted his arm to slap her.
Yelling at him to stop, Tash jumped between them and received a crowning blow to the side of her face, the sharp edge of his glove buckle catching her cheek just millimetres from her eye.
‘Shit!’ He backed away as Franny charged out of the box, running slap into Stefan who made a grab for her and missed as she bolted towards the stabling area, blind with tears. Seconds later, Stefan had been jumped on by the stringers outside. Beside him, the door slammed shut in the wind.
Inside the box, Tash was reeling, her eye smarting with pain as she reached up to her face and felt the damp, hot trickle of blood.
‘You shouldn’t have got in the way.’ Hugo cleared his throat defensively, backing off even more.
‘You were going to hit Franny.’ Fighting not to cry, she headed towards the lavatory and fetched some toilet paper to stem the bleeding.
‘You guys okay?’ Stefan clambered into the box, having told the reporters to get lost.
‘Terrific.’ Hugo started to pull off his gloves, his voice icy cool now. ‘We’re in roaring party spirits, in fact. Can I get you a drink or a canapé or something?’
‘Hugo, I think you need to sit down, mate.’ Stefan watched him in concern.
‘I have full use of my legs, thank you,’ he snapped. ‘I think I need a change of clothes.’ He started to strip off.
Coming out of the loo and mopping her eye, Tash stood beside Stefan and watched for a moment in appalled bewilderment as Hugo frantically tugged off his clothes, ripping them as he went. Down to his underpants, his body as lean and mean as a marathon runner’s, he turned to face them once more.
‘Flattered as I am by having an audience,’ he drawled, ‘I’d far rather you pissed off and left me alone. Don’t you two have prizes to collect or something? And you can stop staring!’ he snarled at Tash. ‘Seeing as you no longer seem to want the goods, just fuck off.’
Twenty
* * *
ABSOLUTELY LIVID AT BEING left alone for so long, Snob napped and misbehaved in the ring when Tash rode in to collect her prize, picking up on her gloom. He bit the rather grand peer who was handing out the awards, and then reared up and refused to leave the ring while the overall winner, Brian Sedgewick, was performing his lap of honour. When Tash finally coaxed him out in a crab-like canter, he almost flattened a spectator’s dog.
‘You’re all bloody animal killers!’ the woman shrieked after her as Tash frantically fought Snob all the way back to the stabling area which was now almost deserted as most of the competitors, knowing they had no chance of being placed, had packed up and left long ago.
Ted was waiting for her, his bush hat rammed down over his nose like Clint Eastwood riding into a strange town.
‘Sorry I wasn’t around,’ he apologised, gathering tack into the big lockers that would be carried to the box. ‘I was arranging for Franny to get a lift home in Isabel Pike’s lorry. She refuses to go back to Maccombe, so I said she could stay at the farm tonight.’
‘Why didn’t you get her a lift with the Stantons?’ Tash asked tiredly. ‘They’re going to the farm anyway to drop Kirsty off.’
‘They left hours ago.’
‘So Kirsty doesn’t know about the accident?’ Tash started to take off Snob’s tack, sighing impatiently as he danced around on the spot, eyes rolling.
‘Oh, she knows about it all right,�
� Ted muttered through clenched teeth. ‘That’s why they left early, I figure. She didn’t even pass on a message for Hugo.’
‘Shit.’
‘Bod and Happy Monday are boxed already, so we just have to get this fella padded up and we’re off.’ He started to lug the crate in the direction of the horse-box area. ‘Stick his kit in that one, will you?’ He nodded towards the one remaining tack trunk.
Looking inside as she tossed in Snob’s tendon boots, she caught her breath. Surfer’s bridle, with its distinctive red rubber cheek protectors, was resting on top. Seeing it made a lump the size of the wicked step-mother’s poisoned apple leap up into her throat. Poor old Surfer, the nervy, eager-to-please gentleman who had the grace of a Burmese cat and the over-enthusiastic boldness of a setter puppy. It may have been Hugo’s fault that he had fallen, she realised, but it was in the nature of the horse to take on the fence with all guns blazing. The reason she herself had chosen to take the longer route there was because she had been almost certain that, faced with the same decision Surfer had faced, Snob would have tried for the same huge, fatal leap. And riding early in the day, she hadn’t known, as Hugo had when he set off, that it could be jumped safely. She dreaded to think what might have happened had the roles been reversed, and she’d set off across country after Stefan’s successful jump.
With Snob padded out in blankets and travelling boots like a nervous roller blader about to hit Hyde Park, Ted took him off to load in the box and Tash scoured the make-shift yard for the last of her belongings. She was one of the final competitors to leave and the place seemed eerily abandoned, like a fair-ground after all the rides had been switched off, the revellers long gone.
Gathering a stray head-collar and Stefan’s black jacket, which he had left thrown over Happy’s door, she headed towards the horsebox, now parked alone in the churned-up, tyre-marked field. Hugo was coming the other way, face set angrily, blue eyes narrowed.