by Fiona Walker
‘He’s got a nerve coming tonight,’ growled Mags.
Dawn, who had almost given up hope of ever meeting Dougie Everett, was blown away by how handsome he was in the flesh, the bone structure as beautiful as anything constructed by a Disney animator conjuring a fairytale prince, his eyes cliché blue, the sun-bleached hair like tousled spun gold and the triangle from broad shoulder to narrow hip in perfect proportion. He was built to wear a dinner suit. She’d happily buff his fingernails and admire his fabulous skin all day. Lucky, lucky Kat.
He didn’t seem to notice the frosty stares around him as he hurried to Dair’s side and muttered urgently in his ear.
‘What? Right now?’ Dair stepped back in shock as Dawn leaped forward to introduce herself as Kat’s best friend, noticing as she did so the deeply troubled expression on his face, the black smudges beneath those blue eyes.
‘Where is she?’ she asked anxiously. ‘What’s happening?’
‘She’s riding the Bolt,’ Dair told her, in an undertone.
Dawn let out a shriek. ‘She’s —’
Dair clamped his hand over her mouth. ‘We mustn’t let word get out yet – they’ll all get overexcited. First, we have to figure out how to stop a plane landing. Sorry.’ He removed his hand from her mouth.
‘I love you being demonstrative.’ She shuddered happily. ‘What plane?’
Dougie was looking around urgently, running his hand through his hair so that it stood on end. ‘If we don’t delay it, it’ll roar down in front of the lake just as she’s crossing it.’
‘I’ll get Dollar to radio Deepak.’ Dair reached for his phone.
‘I’ve tried that. She refused. Apparently Seth’s parents are on board.’ He lowered his voice. ‘She’s pretty wound up about them visiting. She even pulled a gun on me. It seems that there’s some sort of emergency and they can’t delay landing.’
‘What emergency?’ Dawn was thrilled by the turn of events, which was better than a Die Hard movie.
Dougie cleared his throat and dropped his voice even lower. Dawn strained to hear anything he was saying over the party hubbub, although Dair plainly could.
‘Surely they can cross their bloody legs for five minutes,’ he fumed, marching off, intent on finding Dollar. He stopped and hurried back, swallowing nervously. ‘Did you say a gun?’
‘Yes. I got her to put it away by promising I’d try to stop Kat. But I won’t. She deserves this moment. She doesn’t need that fucking plane coming down in her path.’ His eyes flashed and he looked at his watch again, the red streaks deepening in his hollow cheeks, the muscles there hammering. ‘Oh, Christ, she’ll be on her way.’
Watching his face, Dawn realized that he really was deeply, hopelessly and fiercely in love with Kat.
Dougie looked at her in despair. ‘If the mare panics – oh, Christ. This is entirely my fault. I’m going to have to go out there and stop her, aren’t I?’
‘No!’ Dawn looked around at the crowd in the tent, their makeshift saris and turbans. ‘I have an idea.’
Kat and Sri had come flying out of Duke’s Wood into the setting sun bang on target, racing across two cut hayfields and alongside a rapeseed crop before dropping through the steep spinney to thunder along the bank of the nursery lake and into Lush Bottom, where she passed her next time marker at the oak and checked her watch again. She’d lost ground.
Faster, girl. You have to make the quarter bell. You can do it! Give him your answer!
She kicked on, feeling the surge of speed beneath her as they streaked across the familiar stretch of soft turf before taking a tug so they could turn back into the woods again.
Ducking low, feeling the heat of the mare’s neck against her cheek, she laughed at the sheer energy rocketing through her. ‘You are sublime!’ she told Sri. ‘We are sublime!’
Seth was seriously regretting his decision to allow the party to go ahead and to visit his parents so soon after coughing up two lungfuls of lake water. The euphoria that had hit him after his near-death experience had been replaced by total exhaustion and a racking cough. He’d run out of arguments to stop his mother insisting she and his father must come back with him. He should have taken Dollar with him to Bradford, he thought, not left her to cope with everything while he dashed off to see his parents like a guilty teenager.
Now his mother was glaring at him from the seat opposite, handbag clamped to her knee, clearly regretting that final cup of tea before they’d set out. Unlike his luxurious jet, the super-fast little Cessna was the Porsche of the air and had no on-board lavatory. His father was staring excitedly out of the window, commenting on the engineering behind the lines of pylons they were flying over. They were crossing some of the most stunning countryside in Herefordshire, but Japinder Seth Singh was more interested in his bird’s eye view of the National Grid than admiring the Malverns, marvelling at the engineering and the superstructure. Seth smiled to himself, knowing that he was exactly the same. The countryside was largely wasted on him. He was more excited by Eardisford’s new 4G communications mast than the tens of thousands of acres in which it was hidden. Although it was disguised as a tree, its arrival had caused a lot of local consternation, and tonight’s party was an important part of winning villagers around.
With a jolt, Seth realized he had forgotten his fancy dress. He looked around the small plane interior for inspiration, but there were just a few sleep masks and a BCCI cricket hat.
At the controls, Deepak lifted one of his earphones and called back. ‘There will be a delay before we can land, I’m afraid.’
‘What delay?’ demanded Mrs Singh, clearly horrified.
‘There appears to be a lot of debris on the landing strip.’
Seeing his mother’s frozen face, Seth closed his eyes and groaned.
‘Thank you, guys!’ Dawn clapped her hands above her head, spinning around and beaming with gratitude at the half-dressed villagers she’d rallied into urgent action.
The small semi-naked crowd that was now standing on the grass around her stared at a small plane circling high in the sky.
Only Dair was looking in the opposite direction, tilting his head and peering along the broad grass landing strip that was criss-crossed with hundreds of metres of unravelled sari and turban spelling out two words.
‘I’ll get fired for this for sure,’ he muttered, as he read it. ‘Isn’t that advertising?’
In ten-foot lettering, the turbans read, Go Kat!
‘We didn’t have enough time for “Beautiful Dawn”.’ Dawn kissed him tenderly on the mouth.
Dair was bursting with pride for his clever and gutsy new girlfriend. She was a sensation. It was all he could do to stop himself getting down on one knee right there.
Dollar was running towards them across the parkland now, turquoise sari flapping. ‘What are you doing? I will call security and have you all thrown out. This mess must be removed immediately.’
Dawn glanced at her watch, then across the lake to the last sunset-stained fields and woods beside the farm. ‘We’ll have it all cleared away again in five minutes.’
Dollar stepped closer and growled: ‘If Mrs Singh has been forced to avail herself of a plastic cup, that five minutes may have cost you your life.’ She stalked off.
‘Is she always like that?’ Dawn asked Dair, amazed.
‘More or less.’
Lined up on the terrace, Bollywood dancers gyrating around them, guests peered out across the dusk-flooded park. Unable to stand still, Dougie paced up and down the stone balustrade by the dining room, then bounded down the stairs to the lower terrace where some of the villagers were gathered, puffing cigarettes and demanding to know what they were supposed to be looking out for.
‘Fireworks?’ suggested Cyn, now very tipsy on champagne, sequins raining down as she leaned over the balustrade, kicking up her skirts.
Pru hauled her sister back before she fell right over. ‘Shouldn’t they wait until it’s dark?’
And then they al
l held their collective breath as they saw a horse galloping along the lime avenue on the far side of the lake, its coat an unmistakable patchwork of chestnut and white.
‘Kat’s riding the Bolt!’ Miriam gasped. ‘She’s bloody well doing it!’
Kat had expected Sri to hesitate on going into the lake and was ready to give her lots of leg-kicking encouragement as Dougie had taught her. But instead she took a huge running leap, belly-flopping in and almost losing Kat in the process. She clung on tightly as the mare splashed in a paddling, plunging canter through the shallows, sending up arcs of water, her knees high. Then she felt her drop lower beneath her, her neck stretching out and the rhythm changing as she lost her footing and began to swim.
For a moment blind panic engulfed Kat, black water swirling around her. She wondered why she was doing this, what possible good it could do to re-enact an archaic dare just so she could give Dougie Everett his answer. Then she remembered Constance’s eyes, bright as full moons whenever she spoke of doing it, her utter faith that it had given her the extraordinary fortitude and confidence that had spirited her through life. She saw the beautiful house in front of her and felt the amazing power of the horse beneath her, bred from a forefather that had completed the same challenge, and suddenly she knew for certain why she was doing this. She was riding a ghost home to rest: she was taking Constance home one last time.
Atta girl! Feels amazing, doesn’t it? Bloody marvellous. What a horse.
Sri snorted loudly as she swam, a strange bellow-like rhythm that comforted Kat as they powered along, passing a puzzled moorhen and then looming up above the waterline again as the horse’s feet found the bottom and she started plunging in her water-splashing canter towards dry land.
‘You beauty!’ Kat hugged her neck, breathless with exhilaration and relief.
As they scrambled up the bank, she checked her watch. She had just over a minute and a half to get to the Hereford road. There was only the climb up through the parkland to do now, but Sri was tired. They had never timed this section because it was impossible to rehearse, but Dougie had guessed two minutes. Urging Sri to go faster, Kat could see the house glowing in the gathering dusk like the mother ship, the vast marquee and the jewel-covered awning on the terrace its sails. She could hear a strange sound, a roaring cacophony. Then she realized it was cheering.
Kicking back into a gallop, she reached into her pocket for the red scarf she’d tucked in there and pulled it out to hold up so that it trailed behind her in the wind as she charged out of the lime avenue and up to the haha. Rallying her last reserves of energy, Sri jumped in to it in one tiger-like bound and they thundered into the gardens.
Low in the sky behind her a plane engine was roaring as it came down to land, causing the tired mare to put on a burst of panic speed so that she charged through the Italian garden rather faster than Kat had intended, sending box leaves flying and almost flattening a couple canoodling behind a high bank of lavender – was that Russ and Mags looking up at her in shock? – and before she knew it, she was at the base of the terrace steps.
Unable to stop smiling now, she rode up them exactly as Constance had done almost eighty years previously, in through the double doors, clattering across the marble floor where guests and jingling Indian dancers had parted to form a wide path for her to trot through, some astonished, others clapping and whooping.
The crowd began following now, running to keep up as horse and rider trotted out through the double front doors to the long chestnut-lined front drive that led to the Hereford road. Kicking back into hunt-chase pace, Kat’s ears strained for the clock’s quarter chime.
Not that she’d have a hope of hearing it once she spotted Dougie waiting between the tall stone posts supporting the ornate cast-iron gates, each topped with a lion rampant. Kat’s heart was now crashing far too loudly to hear bells, or even Sri’s hoofs. Overwhelming pride and relief lit his face as she galloped towards him and he held out his arms, shouting something she couldn’t hear. She didn’t need to hear it to know how he felt. Kicking to go faster, fifty yards between them, she finally understood what looking love straight in the eye really meant.
Behind her, the music boomed, the aeroplane roaring down beyond the house, but Kat barely heard more than a distant rhythm and a tinny buzz. The wave of party guests following her along the drive were cheering, a rowdy, shrieking babble, familiar village voices whooping her name, but Kat heard only her own rasping, exhausted breaths and drumming heartbeat as she came to a halt at last, reaching up to touch one of the lions rampant and looking down to see Dougie clapping and whooping, his handsome face wreathed in smiles – was that a tear? – telling her she’d done it, she’d really bloody well done it, and she was amazing and he really bloody loved her with all his heart.
Still hardly able to take it in, Kat slid from Sri on jelly legs and covered the mare with pats and kisses, while Dougie loosened her girth and noseband. Kat thanked her over and over again. Then she thanked Constance, out loud, for challenging her to do it, for telling her that it would be the most amazing feeling, that she would understand once she had done it, that it would set her free. ‘Thank you,’ she shouted gleefully at the house, the lions, the sky. ‘You were right. Thank you!’
But Constance’s voice had fallen silent in her head now. She’d found her way home in style.
Dougie stepped behind her, wrapping his arms around her. ‘Hear that?’
The quarter chime was ringing out, and she let out a cry of euphoria, pressing her face against Sri’s hot neck. ‘You are beautiful. You are more than sublime.’ She turned to Dougie, her heart so overwhelmed with emotion it felt as though it was bungee-jumping between the moon and the earth. She suddenly found she couldn’t speak.
He had no words either. Instead he kissed her, a kiss that turned her tired legs into air, her aching muscles into pure energy, her over-pumped, exhausted heart into a furnace.
When they pulled apart, his eyes didn’t leave hers, arms tight and protective around her, foreheads pressed together and lashes tangling.
The party guests had started to catch up. One of the girl grooms from the village took Sri to walk her around to cool off. Congratulations were coming thick and fast. Mobile phones were out taking photographs, voices chattering that this was the last time the Bolt would ever be run, that Constance would have been proud, and a few less charitable, that Dougie Everett should sling his hook right now and leave Kat alone.
Neither Kat nor Dougie heard a word.
‘I have my answer for you,’ she told him.
He blinked, his thick lashes soft against her cheek, then carried on looking so deeply into her eyes she thought he’d probably seen exactly what she was saying before it passed her lips.
‘My answer is not yet.’
Somebody in the crowd shushed the others, the noise spreading like a hiss before it fell quiet.
His eyes danced between hers. ‘That’s a good answer.’
Kat’s voice cracked with emotion. ‘Now I have a question for you.’
‘Anything.’
‘Will you stay?’
He didn’t hesitate. ‘Yes.’
On the landing strip, Mrs Singh was the first on to the steps, lifting her sari as she stepped hurriedly down. Waiting at the bottom, an attractive girl was holding open the door of a glossy black car. She pressed her hands together reverently. ‘Namaste.’
Mrs Singh threw herself inside. ‘Don’t wait for the others,’ she hissed. ‘Drive!’
Dollar rushed round to the driver’s side and leaped in, flipping the shift. They reached a bathroom within thirty seconds, a luxurious haven out of bounds to party guests, into which Mrs Singh hurried. Two minutes later, she reappeared, smiling, acknowledging the girl with a grateful nod. ‘Please now take me back to my son.’
It was a start, Dollar told herself. A small, bonding start. She could do the life-saving heroics later.
When she delivered Mrs Singh back to Seth, both women were startled
to find him wearing a black sleep mask with holes cut into it like Zorro, topped with a cricket Panama. Even half covered, Seth’s worried face told Dollar that he’d momentarily believed she’d abducted his mother. But then his mouth split into its big-kid smile, and he said, ‘Mum, Dad – I’d like you to meet Dollar. The girl I want to marry.’
Dollar flew to his side, fighting tears of joy: Seth introducing her like that meant his parents must have given their approval. ‘You’ve told them all about me?’ she whispered happily.
He swallowed hard, looking from one parent to the other. ‘This is the first they know.’
Mrs Singh cast her eye up and down Dollar. ‘I hope you are not planning to start family life here in this house. It is far too large for small children and it will be impossible to heat.’