“I’ll take one of the ambulances,” said Mabel, swaying unsteadily to her feet.
“You’re drunk!” said Georgina on the verge of tears.
Agatha wrung her hands, wailing, “Emma will be going across the fields, jumping fences. We won’t be able to catch her in a motor!”
Where a moment before, Pauline had felt only panic and fright, suddenly she felt clearheaded and purposeful. “There’s only one way to catch her, and that’s on another horse,” said Pauline with decision. “I’ll ride Mathieu’s carthorse. Quick, Mabel, your trousers.” Pauline changed while Valerie saddled up the horse and, with little time lost, Pauline set out in pursuit of Miss Barnard.
When the girls returned from the barn to the house, they found a dazed Flora stumbling down the staircase. Having lost consciousness when hit by a chunk of debris from the blast, she had been oblivious to the excitement downstairs. Forgetting their animosity for Flora, the girls quickly related all that had happened. When they reached the part about Pauline riding after Miss Barnard, Flora turned quite pale.
“Pauline? You say Pauline went after her?” she queried in a voice so fraught with fear as to be almost unrecognizable. “She has only ridden once. Why did you send her? She has ridden but once in her life.”
The girls looked at each other, speechless, until finally Alice broke the awful silence. “I assure you, Flora, we had no idea. We should never have let her go if we had. She appeared a most accomplished rider.”
“Which way did they go?” Flora asked sharply, shaking off her despair. “I shall take one of the ambulances and go after them.” Flora pulled on her overcoat as she spoke, and was out the door before anyone had a chance to reply. She had just started the motor when Valerie jumped in the other side.
“Allons-y! Hurry, we must find them,” was all she said. Flora gunned the motor and they were off.
It was a wild night to be abroad, and the blustery winds now covered the moon with clouds, now blew them away so that the countryside was almost as bright as day in the moonlight. Valérie and Flora drove in tense silence, bouncing over the rutted roads. Then Valerie spoke.
“We drive towards the front, but do not be tempted to try any of your dirty business.” As she said this, Valerie removed her hand from her pocket to reveal a pistol.
“I must insist that you put that weapon away, Miss Burne-Jones, and you would be well advised to refrain from such wild accusations,” Flora replied sharply, never taking her eyes from the road.
Valerie glared at Flora, as if gathering strength for another attack, when they rounded a curve and Flora pointed out the window. “There!” she breathed, and they both saw the unmistakable figure of Emma streaking across the fields and bounding over the rustic fences as if she were running the Grand National, Miss Barnard perfectly balanced in the saddle. “She is like a valkyrie,” said Valerie, overcome with admiration, even though it was clear Miss Barnard was quite mad.
“And look!” There was Mathieu’s heavy percheron, moving at a lumbering gallop across the fields, his path angled to intercept Miss Barnard’s. They could just make out the slim figure clinging to his back, her mac glistening with rain, before a dark cloud covered the moon. “She must have taken, how you call it, a shortcut,” Valerie remarked tensely.
“But will she reach her in time?” Flora whispered hoarsely as she gunned the engine and turned into the field. They knew they were very near the front—they could now see the craters made by the recent shelling, and the barbed wire, and hear the distant crack of rifles. Death was very close now. A sudden gust of wind shredded the veil of cloud from the moon, illuminating for an instant the field. Not more than a hundred yards ahead was the form of a thrown rider, struggling to get up, a horse standing nearby with its head hanging down, breathing hard.
Flora stopped the ambulance with a jerk. Flinging herself out of the vehicle, she ran toward the fallen rider with Valerie behind her, squelching rapidly through the mud. When the two reached the fallen figure, they saw it was Pauline trying desperately to lift herself out of the mud. Flora flung her arms around the panting, bedraggled girl. “Oh, Pauline, my Pauline, thank God you’re safe,” she cried, clutching the sodden head to her bosom.
“Miss Barnard and Emma,” was all Pauline managed to get out as she lifted a trembling hand and pointed. Then Flora and Valerie saw it—a few feet away, blending in with the mud and rain and desolation, were two dark mounds which seemed part of the landscape. Flora ran to the prone woman, Valerie at her side and Pauline dragging herself behind. The rain had cleaned the mud from Miss Barnard’s face, and they could all see imprinted on it a faintly triumphant smile.
The girls stood a moment in despair, then Valerie wheeled around and pointed accusingly at Flora, “Tu l’as fait!” she cried. “You did this thing! You are an espion, worse than les sales boches!” Even Pauline understood this. The phrase “dirty German” was on everyone’s lips these days, no matter the language.
“I am no spy!” said Flora so forcefully, that for a moment Pauline believed her. Then memories of Flora’s iniquity rose up like a fresh misery in her mind.
“It’s no good, Flora,” she shouted through the rising wind. “We know! I saw you signaling with your torch. I saw you speaking with the German yesterday, the letter to Berlin—I could not believe it of you, Flora, but when I saw you with the torch, I knew there could be no other explanation. I can’t turn you in . . . just, please . . . go away. Disappear.”
“But me, I can turn you in!” said Valerie fiercely. “Or I can deal with you now, like the chien you are!” Drawing the pistol from her pocket, Valerie pointed it at Flora. Horrified, Pauline grabbed her arm, and the revolver went off. Flora flinched as the bullet whistled past her ear, and Valerie stood, holding her pistol, looking at it in a sort of shock.
“You fools!” said a low voice. They turned, and to their amazement they saw that Miss Barnard had risen to her full, imposing height. Her eyes flashed with the keen intelligence they remembered, and they knew her sanity had returned at last. “Have you learned nothing from the horrors of war but hate and madness and death?” And as she spoke, Emma, too, struggled to her feet, whinnying a little.
Valérie stood for a moment longer, gazing at her gun. Then, “Qu’est-ce que j’ai fait? What have I done?” she wailed, and hurled the gun as far away from her as she could.
“No one has been hurt, this time,” said Miss Barnard gently, but with a warning edge. Then she turned toward Flora and asked slowly, in a level voice, “Miss Thurlow, do you have some explanation to offer?”
“I thought I was in love with Marlene,” Flora started, “and she with me.” A look of understanding grew on the faces of the other women as they listened.
“We had planned to meet in Switzerland, when I received a letter from her, breaking off our affair. But I could not forget Marlene, and I wrote her again and again, pleading with her to take me back. I knew I would go mad if I continued on in that way, so I joined the Volunteers. The letter I wrote that night was my last and for my benefit alone, for I never posted it.”
The look of pain on Pauline’s face as Flora spoke of Marlene was unmistakable, and as Flora continued, she moved closer to Pauline, and put an arm around the trembling girl. “Dear Pauline, I did give some few supplies to the German you saw, but no secrets. I knew Klaus from his days as the bouncer at the Kit Kat Klub, where Marlene worked. When I saw him, it was as if the wounds were fresh again and I had to know what had become of her. I learned from him that Marlene had married the owner of the club, an abhorrent little man, but quite well connected—the kind of man who, even in wartime, could procure for Marlene the luxuries she found so indispensable. I must confess this news threw me into a turmoil, and I spent all the next day walking and going over our relationship in my mind. When I returned that night, I went to my room and played a little game that Marlene and I had shared, a child’s game of shadow puppets.”
“So you were not signaling at all!” Pauline wo
ndered that she could have been so distrustful of actions, which, in retrospect, were clearly quite innocent. But then a darker thought crossed her mind. “So . . . you are still in love with Marlene?”
“No, dear girl, I don’t believe I ever was. As I played that child’s game, I knew, with certainty, that I was through with Marlene and our childish relationship. I had gone downstairs to tell you just that, when I learned that you had so bravely set off after Miss Barnard.” Now Pauline took Flora in her arms, and Flora rested her golden curls on the gangly girl’s shoulder.
Then Valerie, who had been uncharacteristically silent throughout Flora’s account, spoke at last. “Marlene? Marlene Rauffenstein?”
“Why yes. Are you acquainted with Marlene?” Flora asked with surprise.
“Oui, cette femme débauchée. At one time, she broke my heart, and those of many others that I know.”
“Broken hearts,” sighed Miss Barnard. “War has a way of producing quite a number of those, doesn’t it?” Pauline now dared to put an arm around their commander, in her rare moment of weakness, and with typical Gallic warmth, Valerie embraced all three of them.
“Again you are thinking of this Mary, n’est-ce pas?” she queried sympathetically.
“Mary, Millicent, all the girls I have lost,” replied Miss Barnard.
“Millicent? Why, Millicent will soon be herself again,” said Flora with a smile. “She took quite a blow to the head, but when we left the farmhouse, she had already come round.”
Pauline felt Miss Barnard stagger, and she would have fallen if Pauline and Valerie had not supported her. “Millicent? Alive?” Miss Barnard choked out. “Can it really be true?” It was agreed that Valerie would drive Miss Barnard back while Flora and Pauline took care of the horses. “And we’ll keep this incident to ourselves, girls. No need for the superintendent or the other girls to know,” said Miss Barnard firmly.
As she and Flora rode back over the war-torn battlefields, the sun rising behind them, Pauline realized that war was not all uniforms and glory, but also madness, despair, and death. Yet strangely enough, it had brought her a kind of inner quietude, which had taken the place of those questions to which she had so long sought the answers. For Pauline knew now, with a serene sense of inevitability, the kind of woman she was—and glancing at the woman by her side, she marveled that the path she had followed to find herself, had, in the end, led her to Flora.
THE STABLEBOY
Peg rushed in the front door, nearly colliding with her younger brother, Johnny. “Hey sis, where’s the fire?” he teased. “Gangway!” Peg panted, pushing past him. Her long legs took the stairs two steps at a time as she raced up to her bedroom on the second floor of their comfortable suburban home. She glanced at the clock on her bedside table, whose hands stood at 3:20. Would she make it? She tore off the crisp white shirt with the Peter Pan collar, the full plaid skirt, the loafers and bobby sox. “Hateful things!” she muttered to herself, tossing them into the back of her closet. Turning, she caught a glimpse of herself in the mirror, her lanky frame clad only in sensible cotton underwear and a tiny “training” brassiere. Peg frowned, disliking the gawky girl she saw, with her bright red hair and freckles. Not quite sixteen, she was unable to appreciate the blossoming sensuality in the full red lips, the keen intelligence shining from candid blue eyes. She saw only the length of her legs, not their shapeliness.
Wasting no time, she pulled on her worn jodhpurs and an old flannel shirt that had belonged to her beloved Uncle Roger. She tugged on her riding boots, then clumpety-clumped down the back stairs to the kitchen, pulling on her gray wool cardigan. Johnny was taking a Coke from the fridge, balancing his baseball bat, with his mitt slung over it, on his shoulder. He was just taking a noisy gulp when they both heard the front door open and the cool patrician voice of their older sister, Carol. “Peg, are you here? We’re going to be late for the meeting of the Fall Frolic decorating committee.” In an instant, Peg was out the back door and on her bicycle.
The autumn breeze cooled Peg’s flushed cheeks as she rode her bicycle down Meadowbrook Lane toward Chatham Stables. Her heart lightened and the pedals seemed to sing beneath her feet as she got farther away from Carol and the frightening world of femininity she represented, and closer to the stables, her true home. Oh, she’d tried to fit in at Chatham Day School, and at the country club. She’d hunched down to conceal her height. She’d tried to talk about nail polish and Rock Hudson as if she gave a darn about either of them. But deep down Peg knew her efforts were hopeless; she would never be popular—not like Carol, who ruled the smooth set at Chatham Day, Carol with her honey-blond pageboy, and star quarterback Fred Grayson as her steady. At Chatham Day, Peg would always be in the shadow of her older sister. At the stables, she could be herself, surrounded by people who thought horses were the most important thing in the world!
And there was another reason Peg did not want to miss today’s visit to the stables: Pat Kowalski, the new stableboy. He was different from other boys, and although she had known him only a week, Peg felt strangely drawn to him. But he was often distant, responding to Peg’s questions with clipped monosyllables. To Peg, he was still an enigma.
Here were the stables! Peg glided under the rustic wooden sign and, jumping off her bike, wheeled the vehicle into the tack room. She stood there a moment, inhaling the smells—leather, oats, and that sweaty, musky, indefinable scent that said “horses.” Then she went to greet Merrylegs, her faithful old pony. She had belonged to Peg since Peg’s ninth birthday, and it seemed not so long ago that she and Merrylegs had been part of a troupe of other little girls and their ponies. Peg sighed. Now the other ponies were sold, their former mistresses no longer interested in horses, instead inexplicably fascinated by clothes and boys. Even Marjorie and Doreen, Peg’s closest pals in the pony club days, now acted as if they didn’t know a forelock from a fetlock. Peg had heard her mother and Carol discussing her, wondering when she, too, would get past the “horse phase.” How desperately Peg wanted them to understand that she would never tire of horses!
As she reached Merrylegs’s stall, she heard Pat’s voice. “Whisht, girl, whisht,” was all he said, in a low soothing tone, and Peg’s skin prickled. Deliberately, she sauntered down the line of stalls, trying to act casual.
Pat was in a stall with a beautiful dappled gray mare Peg had never seen before, whose flaring nostrils and fine muzzle revealed thoroughbred blood. She stood no more than sixteen hands, Peg guessed, but every inch of her was marked by perfect conformation. Catching Peg’s scent, the new horse put her ears back, and danced away from her, crowding Pat against the wall.
“Whoa!” said Pat, glancing up to see what was alarming the highbred horse. “Watch it,” he warned curtly as he caught sight of Peg standing hesitantly in the stall doorway. “Garbo’s edgy. She used to be a circus horse, and it seems she was tormented by one of the clowns.”
“Oh, how awful,” breathed Peg. She stood stock-still as Garbo, her ears back and her eyes rolling, tossed her head up and down rapidly. When Peg didn’t move, Garbo calmed down, and finally stretched her neck out to snuffle Peg all over. Peg was like a statue as the beautiful mare tickled her with her whiskers, sending shivers down her spine. She looked deeply into the horse’s intelligent brown eyes for a moment, then Garbo dropped her head coyly, and pretended to nibble some hay on the stall floor. In spite of herself, Peg laughed. “What a flirt you are,” she crooned, caressing Garbo’s velvety nose. The splendid animal accepted the caress, arching her neck with pleasure.
“Well, you’ve certainly charmed her,” Pat observed. “Maybe you can give me a hand here, while I change her dressing.”
“I’d love to!” Peg said, still lost in Garbo’s rich brown gaze.
Peg held Garbo steady while Pat’s skillful fingers unwrapped the bandage from Garbo’s right foreleg. From her vantage point, Peg could admire Pat’s tanned, muscular forearms and glossy black hair. When the bandage was off, Pat glanced up at Peg, with a swif
t smile. “The dressing has to be changed every day,” he explained. “Garbo has a strained tendon, and the best thing for her is a nice hot pack of Epsom salts.” While he worked, he continued talking. “Mrs. Huntley wants to show her when she’s well. She’s too fine an animal to be just an old saddle horse, teaching little kids how to ride. Mrs. Huntley thinks that by showing her, we could pull in some new business. We’re going to try her out on the jumps when she’s well.”
Together they prepared the new dressing, and soon they were talking away as if they’d known each other forever. Peg told Pat how she’d been coming to the stables since she was six years old, and how much she loved horses. It turned out they’d both read many of the same books—King of the Wind, and even A Girl and Her Horse.
“How funny that you’ve read that!” Peg exclaimed. “Most boys won’t read something if they think it’s a ‘girl’s book.’ ”
Pat blushed, and said, “My—my sister had a copy, and I happened to read it when I was sick . . .”
Sensing he was embarrassed, Peg changed the subject. “You’re so lucky to have this job here! I’d love to have a job like this, but my mother would never let me. She says, ‘There’s a reason the term is stableboy.’ ”
“I know,” Pat said. “Most places around here wouldn’t even think of hiring a stablegirl.”
“That’s awful!” said Peg indignantly. “When I have my own stables, I’m going to hire nobody but girls!” She couldn’t help resenting Pat his privileged position, just a little bit.
“I know how you feel,” said Pat somberly. “I’m just taking advantage of an outmoded system of discrimination. But I have to.” He paused a second and looked at Peg intently with his level gray eyes. “You see . . . we really need the money at home. My Dad died a couple years back, and my mom works as a cleaning lady . . .”
“I—I see,” said Peg a little awkwardly, not used to such a frank discussion of finances.
Big Book Of Lesbian Horse Stories Page 5