Dead Man Riding

by Gillian Linscott

  Imogen gasped, ‘Oh, what happened?’

  He glared at her. ‘Bit of a fall. Nothing to make a fuss about.’ Then he and Sid marched on out of the yard.

  I was bending down undoing the girth. When I looked up Meredith was looking at me across Sheba’s back, signalling a question as clearly as if he’d said it, ‘Well, do we tell them?’ We’d discussed it on the way back and come to the conclusion, probably no. It was a long ride so we came to it from all directions. Ethically, it turned out that we both took the Stoic view on suicide, that there were circumstances when it might be the act of a rational man or woman. This was probably one of them. The Old Man was eccentric to put it mildly, but obviously capable of taking decisions. Legally it was a serious offence to try to kill yourself, but we agreed the law was an ass in that respect. What would-be suicide was ever deterred by the thought that the magistrates might not like it? Humanely – well, that was the problem and what we talked about most of the time. What was best for the Old Man? It was a pity for him that the thing hadn’t gone as he intended, but as far as we could tell we were the only two who knew what had happened. Robin had given no sign that he guessed and Alan and Nathan had been too far away to see it. So it was up to us to decide whether to tell Alan.

  ‘Or perhaps Dulcie,’ Meredith had suggested.

  ‘Why Dulcie?’ I could guess, but wanted to know what he’d say.

  ‘They’re hardly trying to hide that fact that she’s more than his housekeeper.’

  I liked the fact that he could say it to me, adult to adult, with no hypocrisy or sign of disapproval. So we changed the question to whether to tell Alan or Dulcie or both and decided tentatively against it. There were all sorts of reasons, but in the end it came down to the Old Man’s pride. Meredith agreed with me that he was a survivor from a more buccaneering age and we both respected that. If we told either of them he’d feel diminished in their eyes by his failure. But our decision was provisional. We agreed that if the Old Man gave any signs of wanting help, then we’d speak to one of them – or both. His decisive rejection of Imogen’s sympathy answered that question at least. If either she or Alan had pressed the point it might have been another matter but they had other things to think about, as I found out when she followed me up to our loft when I went to change back into a skirt. I asked her if anything had happened while we’d been away.

  ‘Not really.’ But there was something in her voice that said otherwise.

  ‘What did you do?’

  ‘Midge and I just lazed around and read mostly. We didn’t see much of Dulcie, and Kit hardly spoke to us. Midge wondered if his arm might be going septic and offered to re-bandage it and he nearly bit her head off.’

  ‘I wonder why.’

  ‘Why that tone of voice?’

  ‘Because you must have at least a suspicion why Kit’s in a bad mood.’

  ‘Yes. Only it’s more than a suspicion.’

  ‘So he did say something?’

  ‘Not say exactly, no. But I found a letter from him. I’d left my copy of Plato up in the barn with the men’s books and when I went up to collect it this morning, there was a letter from him inside it.’

  ‘An angry letter?’

  ‘Yes, no … I don’t know. Just so terribly hurt, Nell. Would you like to read it?’

  ‘No!’

  But she already had the letter in her hand. ‘I want you to. I feel so sad about it and I want you to tell me it’s not my fault. It really isn’t.’ She practically forced it into my hands so I sat down on my hay pallet and read in Kit’s flowing black handwriting.

  Oh my dear, the other and better half of me. I’ve tried hard to say nothing, even to see nothing, but it’s like letting somebody you love stand there on the edge of a precipice and not calling out. There are so many things I could say to try to persuade you to step back – all the sensible rational things – but they would insult both of us. Simply, you know the path that you’re taking is wrong. I sense that because there’s not a thought you can have that’s not my thought as well, not a breath or a heartbeat of yours that isn’t mine. Perhaps I should have spoken out, but I simply didn’t think I needed to because I was so convinced you guessed – no, not guessed, that you knew – everything that’s in my head. I’m still sure that is true but I can’t stand the thought of seeing you take an irrevocable step that can only cause hurt and grief to you and your friends because of a few words not spoken, or written at least. I love you. K.

  I looked at the envelope on the pallet beside me. It had no address, only a circle with two crosses through it.

  ‘What’s that? Kisses?’

  She shook her head. ‘It’s more Plato. One of his characters makes this wonderful speech about how all human beings were once completely round in shape, with four arms and four legs. Then a jealous god cut them in half, so we’re all looking for our true other halves.’

  ‘And Kit is convinced you’re his.’

  ‘You can’t choose who you fall in love with. For a while, yes, I thought it might be Kit. But I did nothing to encourage him, Nell. Nothing to cause this.’

  She took the letter from me and folded it back in its envelope. While I washed and changed my clothes and brushed sand out of my hair she lay back on her hay mattress watching me.

  ‘I’m trying to read your expression, Nell. Are you blaming me?’

  ‘No.’

  ‘I’m desperately sorry about Kit, but it makes no difference. I’ve made my decision.’

  ‘What about?’

  ‘You know, what we were talking about. While Alan was away it gave me the chance to think about it quite rationally and calmly and…’

  ‘So you’re going to,’ I said.

  ‘How did you know?’

  ‘When anybody talks about being rational and calm it’s usually a sign she’s going to do something irrational and wild.’

  ‘Nell!’ She threw one of my rolled-up stockings at me. ‘So you don’t approve.’

  ‘I don’t approve or disapprove. You’re a grown woman and I wish you luck with all my heart.’

  She got up and hugged me and we went down to join the others. Obviously it hadn’t been an occasion for talking about suicidal old men.

  * * *

  That evening we had supper together outside the barn as usual, slices of buttered bread and ham, sausages grilled on sticks over the fire, tea and bottled ale and the last of the golden gooseberries. The sun slid down towards the sea, the heat of the day faded to a perfect warmth and the martins on their last flights before roosting and the bats just waking up flew loops round each other. It should have been idyllic, but nobody seemed happy; even Nathan was too exhausted from the ride to make his usual jokes. Alan and Imogen sat apart from each other and talked more or less like rational beings but they were like two magnets parted, the air between them crackling with attraction. Kit couldn’t have helped being aware of it but he sat staring out at the red setting sun, holding his mug of ale but not drinking much. Meredith talked about the year he’d spent at Heidelberg and led me into some stories of my wanderings in Germany, but that petered out after a while and once the sun was below the horizon we went to our various beds. Midge and I changed into our nightdresses and lay down on our hay mattresses. Later the moon came up over the roof of the stables and shone on Midge, curled up and making little contented noises too soft to be called snores and on Imogen standing by the window still fully dressed. I asked her softly, so as not to wake Midge, if she was going to bed. She shook her head.

  ‘No. I’m going to meet Alan later, after the other men are asleep.’ She sounded excited and nervous. I knew there wasn’t much to be said and later whispered a good luck to her as she went softly down the stairs. She didn’t answer. I dozed but woke later to hear her coming back up the stairs.

  ‘I’ve done it, Nell.’ Her voice was part-triumphant, but shaky as well. I suppose my reactions were those of any fairly well-brought up young woman whose best friend has just taken the irrevocab
le step – concern for her, curiosity, and annoyance that she’d got there first. Midge was still asleep, or pretending well.

  ‘Aren’t you going to ask me if I regret it?’

  ‘Do you?’

  ‘No.’ There was a ‘but’ in her voice, though. Something hadn’t been as she expected it. It struck me that she hadn’t been gone very long and surely two lovers on a hay-scented moonlit night shouldn’t part before dawn.

  ‘What time is it?’

  ‘Does it matter?’

  I found my watch and looked at it in the moonlight. Quarter past one.

  ‘Are you going to sleep now?’

  ‘I don’t know. I feel so … I don’t know … so confused.’

  She went to the window. It struck me that part of her attention was still on something happening outside. Perhaps Alan was down there, keeping watch on his beloved.

  ‘Did Alan bring you back here?’

  She shook her head. Something was wrong. Please the gods they hadn’t gone and quarrelled already.

  ‘Nell, when you said—’

  I think she was on the point then of telling me what had gone wrong but Midge stirred and opened her eyes.

  ‘What’s happening?’

  ‘Nothing,’ Imogen said. ‘I’m just going to bed.’

  She undressed to her chemise and petticoat and lay down. I’m not sure if she slept. I did for a while but woke up at one point while it was still dark and realised what had disturbed me were soft footsteps down below in the tack room. I imagined the Old Man pacing, then I turned over, dozed again and woke up to find the room full of sunlight. Just after five o’clock by my watch and no hope of getting back to sleep. My head was muzzy, my skin prickling with bits of hay and insect bites and the idea of cool river water came into my mind. Midge was asleep, Imogen lying on her back with her eyes closed, still in her underwear.

  I got dressed, grabbed a towel and went down the stairs to the tack room in bare feet, hoping not to meet the Old Man and have to explain what I was doing. No sign of him in the tack room or the stable yard and nothing in the yard by the house except sparrows taking dustbaths. I went along the lane and through the gate into the mares’ field, wading through buttercups, my muzziness and itchiness fading with the clean morning air and the pleasure of being up and about before anybody else. There was a lot of mist, mostly down by the river as usual but reaching long fingers up into the rest of the field and collecting in the hollows, with the treetops standing out above it. It closed over me as I went down the slope to the river, like being under a milky canopy. There was a splash of something going off the bank and into the river that might have been an otter. When I tried the water with my toes it felt cold enough to question whether a swim would be such a good idea after all, so I got my clothes off quickly before I could change my mind and waded in. There’s something about swimming on your own in the early morning that makes it better than other times, the little quiver of risk perhaps or the feeling that you might choose to float right away and not come back, turn into another person altogether. Not even a person necessarily – an otter or a fish. Being shut in under the mist made it seem even more of a private world and I stayed in the river for quite a long time, sometimes swimming, sometimes just kneeling with my head out of the water, watching two dippers bobbing up and down where the water broke over rocks. After a while the cold got to me so I swam back to where my clothes were, got dried and dressed but left my hair down to dry.

  Going back up the slope I was in no hurry. I didn’t have my watch with me but guessed it was still early, probably not seven o’clock yet. I’d climbed above the mist belt and was in sunshine but the mist wasn’t dispersing yet. If anything it looked thicker than ever down the paddock towards the little gate where we’d ridden through to Mawbray’s land. I was looking in that direction when I heard a horse whinny, high and sharp, then more whinnying. I wasn’t too worried because horses turned out together sometimes have little quarrels but, remembering the mare that had got kicked, I thought I’d better wander down in that direction just in case. I’d taken only a few steps when it happened. A silver horse came galloping out of the mist, mane flying, with a rider on his back. I had no doubt it was the Old Man. Who else would be riding Sid? But from the first glance I knew that something was wrong. The Old Man was a superb rider and a very upright figure in the saddle. Now he was slumped forward, his head low down on the horse’s neck. Sid knew it felt wrong there. He kept tossing his head, trying to get the rider back into position, but every time the head slumped down again. And the whinnying I’d heard had been the horse yelling out in fear and distress. He did it again as they came near me. I ran towards him and tried to grab for the rein but he swerved round me, his eyes wide and terrified, nostrils flaring so that you could see the bright red veins inside them. As he swept past, just missing me, I saw the Old Man’s lolling head and open eyes and knew at once that he was dead. His heart. He’d gone out riding early and alone and his heart had gone, the way it nearly did when I’d seen him in the tack room. Sid was galloping up the field, making for the top gate. The mares had caught his terror and were thundering after him in a bunch. I had to jump aside as they went past and for a moment the tossing heads and manes looked very much like the Old Man’s picture of the sea-wave horses in the tack room. Sid got to the gate and stood and yelled there for a while. Yelled, I’m sure, for the Old Man, not believing that the flopping thing on his back had anything to do with him. I wondered why he hadn’t shaken it off in that mad gallop up the field. Perhaps, even in death, habit kept the Old Man in the saddle. Then when nobody came to the gate to help him Sid was off again, galloping across and down the field with the mares following. There was no hope that I could catch him so I ran up the field and into the lane. Before I’d gone far Robin came running from the direction of the house, looking anxious. I supposed the whinnying had carried up to the stable yard.

  ‘What’s happening?’

  I gasped out something, then we both ran. Sid and the mares were at the far side of the field when we got to the gate, just standing. But they weren’t standing because they’d calmed down. They’d reached the point in their collective panic where they didn’t know what to do next. Perhaps our figures at the gate decided Sid, because he came galloping and bucking towards us, the mares trailing behind. When he bucked the figure on his back jerked upright as if it had come back to life for an instant then slumped down again.

  ‘Why doesn’t he fall off?’ I heard my own voice saying it.

  Robin didn’t answer. He waited until Sid was within a few yards of the gate and let out a long, low whistle. Sid dug his hooves in and skidded to a stop, rolling an eye towards Robin, ready to gallop off again. Robin whistled again, the same low throbbing note, then vaulted over the gate and went towards the horse. When he came near Sid snorted and started backing away. I was sure he was going to turn and gallop off again but Robin was saying something to him – more of a chant than normal speech – and the terrified horse was listening. He let Robin go up to him and put a hand on his neck and only made a little flinch away when he picked up the rein. Robin stroked his neck until he was calm then led him over to the gate. After the first glance he hadn’t looked at the Old Man. He knew as well as I did that he was dead.

  * * *

  I walked through the gate and went to meet them. Robin needed to keep hold of Sid’s rein so I had to look at the Old Man. I’d seen dead bodies before but they’d been laid out neatly on beds and I wasn’t sure that I could manage it. I made myself think of my father with his patients, pretend for a while that the Old Man might be alive and need help. Even so, I had to take it carefully, a bit at a time. Start with the feet. His feet must have got wedged in the stirrups, that was why he hadn’t fallen off. I was looking at the leg and foot on the near side. He was wearing gaiters and short boots as usual and his foot was tight in the stirrup, but it wasn’t wedged there, it was tied. It took me a long time to believe what I was seeing. The Old Man’s ankle w
as tied with a leather thong to the stirrup iron. Then something worse. There was thick string tied to the stirrup iron as well. It went from there under Sid’s belly, alongside the girth and when I went round to the off side I saw it was knotted to the stirrup iron there too. The offside foot was tied to the stirrup like the other one. That would have been enough to secure his body in the saddle, but there was more. His hands, brown and gloveless, were tied with more leather thongs to a broad leather strap round Sid’s neck. Bound hand and foot to a terrified horse. Something stirred in my mind. I turned and found Robin looking at me, stroking Sid’s nose.

  ‘I think we’d better take him up to the house as he is,’ I said.

  Chapter Eleven

  THE CLATTER OF SID’S HOOVES ON THE STABLE-YARD flagstones sounded terribly normal, as if his owner had brought him in from any ride. The injured mare stuck her head out of the box and whinnied, but this time Sid wasn’t interested. Even Robin couldn’t persuade him to stand still and he went round in circles, rolling his eyes towards the thing on his back. Since Robin had to stay with Sid it was up to me to fetch help, and for a moment I hesitated. Imogen and Midge were nearest, but I didn’t want them to see the Old Man like this. Dulcie Berryman was next nearest and probably down in the kitchen by now, but the same thing applied. I admit my first reaction was to run for Meredith. He was older, after all he was a don. He’d know what to do. It was only then that I thought of Alan and remembered he had the right to know first. Looking back, it’s odd that the idea of sending for the police didn’t come into my mind at that point. Perhaps we’d already got used to managing things for ourselves up there. I told Robin to hang on, I’d be back soon and started running but before I’d gone more than a stride, there was Dulcie. She was walking under the arch between the house and the stable yard, with a big apron over her dress and slippers on her feet. From the casual way she was strolling and the beginnings of her usual smile when she saw me, there was no idea in her mind that anything was wrong. Then her face changed. She looked past me at Robin and Sid.