Arthur folded the paper and put it into a drawer in the desk. He lowered the flame in the portable gas lamp and changed into his pajamas in the dark, draping his clothes over the bureau. This room had all he needed to be comfortable, and tomorrow he would unpack his books--mystery novels, tales by Stevenson and Kipling--and line them up on the shelf by the bed.
He wished he could have known who had built this house. Vaughn didn’t know; he’d bought the island from a London acquaintance who’d purchased it from somebody else. Vaughn had been planning to clear the island for an exclusive hotel resort, but then on his one quick visit here he had seen the untamed horses and started to become intrigued by them. What were they doing on the island, living in such isolation? Should he have them killed or corralled or transported somewhere? Vaughn had decided he might have a use for the horses, and to have them studied he had engaged Cripps and June, paying them a great deal of money to install themselves in this tropical solitude.
Recumbent on the bed, Arthur listened to the crickets chirping in the forest. Through the window’s tattered curtain, a gentle draft was cooling the room. A bar of moonlight reached from the window to the side of the bed, and Arthur could see black specks darting through it: mosquitoes kept away from him by the tent of mesh. Finally he felt clear in the head, felt no more dizziness from the air’s cloying sweetness, and he savored the biting smell of the oil that had been burning inside the gas lamp. To live without gadgets, without radio, without plumbing or electricity, would pose a challenge for him, yet neither Cripps nor June had mentioned the lack of modern comforts as a particular hardship. All Cripps seemed to care about was relocating the horses, and June said she’d accustomed herself to drawing water from a nearby spring and cooking their meals on an old wood stove. She’d asked him to help her feed the stove while cooking dinner for them this evening, and from the nonstop talk she indulged in, relating stories from her years of work as a trainer, prodding him for accounts of the racers he had bred in Kenya, describing in the most awestruck tones the strength and speed of the island’s horses, Arthur could tell she was glad he’d come. She was happy because his arrival here gave her a new person to talk to. Unlike her husband, resentful Cripps, she treated him civilly all day long, and in comparison to Cripps, she looked healthy. Cripps was pale despite the sun; she had the tan you’d expect in the tropics. Cripps dragged his feet when he walked; she moved with definite vigor. Nevertheless, like Cripps, she had a frequent habit of yawning. To Arthur it appeared as if she was fighting against exhaustion. Both had probably stayed too long on the island, and Arthur thought he might recommend that Vaughn replace Cripps and June with two other qualified people.
Chapter 6
Arthur was dreaming of a sickly roan and its attempts to mount a mare. The roan kept failing, though the mare was willing, and in its frustration, the roan kicked the side of their hay-filled stall. Its mouth dropped open and released a shout, a cry of anguish entirely human, and Arthur awoke in his pitch-black room feeling a throbbing in his chest.
“Sssh,” said a voice, June’s voice. “We’re not alone here anymore.”
“I don’t care. I can’t stand this.”
“You think I like it?”
“Sometimes I wonder.”
“Don’t be silly. It bothers me, too. We just have to keep looking and looking.”
Arthur heard one of them leaving their room, running out onto the veranda. Then he heard the other one going also, the footsteps light and fleet on the wood.
“T.J. Stop it.”
“I’ll find them right now. Enough is enough.”
“In the dark? With a flashlight? Don’t be ridiculous.”
“I can’t stand being like this.”
“We know the reason. We know it’s only temporary. Now come back to bed and we’ll start looking again tomorrow. Arthur will help us.”
“Arthur...”
“Ssssh. You probably woke him up already.”
Their talking ceased and Arthur heard nothing more. Nothing more of their voices and only the sound of Cripps and June tramping inside and past his door as they returned to their room.
Whenever they went, Arthur accompanied Cripps and June on their search missions in the forest. Or he’d go with one of them, usually June, since they’d split up to cover more ground. Using machetes, they’d walk through bush hoping to catch a glimpse of a horse, desperate to discover where on this island the horses could have secluded themselves, and Arthur would follow the lead of his partner while trying to maintain his own alertness. Surrounded by green, shaded by branches, he felt much stronger on these treks than he did when standing in the sun. Yet the renewal he’d expected to feel on this island, the rejuvenation, was slow in coming. An energy-sapping haze always hung in the air here, and neither breezes off the ocean nor showers at night dispelled it. He knew he was out of shape and so quite prone to wearing down, but even Cripps and June, who should have been used to the climate, seemed at times close to collapse. During their searches, Cripps would stop short panting, endure long moments when he seemed overcome with fatigue, and June on occasion would pause for breath while clinging to a tree for support.
“Just a second,” Cripps would say, and drink some rum from his canteen. And when his wife found herself struggling, she would head for the nearest stream and dunk her face in the water. The cicadas would be whirring in the underbrush then, somewhere above them a bird would caw, and still for Arthur there would be the oversweet smells floating off the flowers, the brightness of all the colors.
‘It’s like an assault on my senses,’ he wrote, when he continued his letter to Vaughn.
‘The reds are blood-red, the purples glow, the greens shine like jade or emerald. Everywhere you look you see profusion, things growing on top of things, and sometimes I feel very claustrophobic. I get an edgy, closed-in feeling I never even got in London. It’s the kind of fear I know is silly, but when it comes I can barely breathe and I see myself being swallowed up by the forest. The vines and growth will take hold of me, I imagine, and never let me go.’
Still, he did not give in to his fear. He continued to stick with Cripps and June regardless of where they went. And when they didn’t go out looking, he would remain at the house also, observing how the husband and wife spoke to each other only when necessary. Cripps for the most part stayed by the telescope, gazing through it to scan the island or dozing in the wicker chair beside it, reaching often for the smudged glass he would keep refilling with rum. June would read while lying on a hammock strung between two trees in the yard. She liked Dickens and Isak Dinesan and borrowed some of the mysteries Arthur had brought. She played backgammon with him, beating him most games, pleased, she said, to be doing something competitive. But that was it. A monotonous life, a life defined by a search and an absence, and Arthur wondered whether Vaughn had known this is how it would be on the island. Perhaps Vaughn had told Jenny he had a place to send Arthur to get the poor man out of their hair, and she had said why not do it. They’d shipped him here letting him think he’d have an interesting job to do. From their perspective they had rid themselves of a burden, and he could picture them in London going to the opera, cheering in the theater, eating at Vaughn’s and playing bridge, arranging their itineraries without having to consider him. To have jettisoned him must have relieved them, and bearing the cost of his gambling debt had been but a minor expense for Vaughn.
Tricked, he thought. They’d taken advantage. But he could still get back to London and pay the lovebirds a visit.
‘Dear Vaughn,’ he wrote:
‘I’m pretty sure I’ve figured it out. You sent them here to study the horses in their natural habitat, thinking perhaps that one day you could crossbreed these particular horses with certain types of tame horses--maybe create a new breed of horse fit for work or horse shows. An improbable plan, but ambitious, and what did you have to lose hiring them? Just money, and you always have plenty of that. When I got here, though, and sized up the situation, I thought you’
d deceived me and sent me over to get me away from you and Jenny. Cripps and June, though more so Cripps, carry themselves as if laboring under a curse, a curse that’s sapping their energy, and I had the thought you’d sent me here so I could waste away, too. But of course, that’s preposterous. You showed me their letters and said they’re odd, and I almost forgot I came here to try to get answers to all this muddle. Well, I do have some answers now. I now believe there’s a link between their languor and the disappearance of the horses. Both of them are always talking about the strength and speed of the horses; they mention how when the horses were around their very presence charged the air with electricity. June says having them close, seeing them tear through the bush, hearing their hooves thundering past, affected her and Cripps, transferred to her and Cripps some of the horses’ animal energy. With the horses around, she says, they felt connected to a primal source of power. And she told me in private that they never had better times in bed than when a horse or two, snorting, neighing, pawing the ground, would stand at night outside their window. The horses, she said, would actually watch them as they did it under their mosquito net. I know it sounds curious, but that’s what she said. And she also said that since the horses went away, Cripps has lost all ability to make love. So they’re suffering. Neither of them sleeps well, and Cripps especially is low, hitting the bottle every day. We ask him to play backgammon with us, join us in a three way tournament to pass the time, but he doesn’t. June and I keep playing, though, and she’s good. Hates to lose. She must’ve been a tiger of a trainer back when. Don’t know many women trainers, come to think of it, so I wonder how she got her start. Had a father who was a trainer, I’d wager, or was raised on a farm with horses. But anyhow, about here - for health reasons alone, it would be best if we found the horses. For both Cripps and June. Maybe they’re under some shared delusion linking the horses to problems strictly their own, but as long as they believe the horses’ absence is at the root of their troubles, we’ll have to keep looking for the goddamned creatures.’
Half asleep, on the point of dropping off, he heard from below a snorting noise that could have come from the nose of a dragon. He sat up in bed, kicking at the sheet, excited to think a horse might be near, and out of the darkness it came again, that forceful push of breath through the nostrils. Crickets and tree frogs went quiet, and Arthur groped in the dark for his leather shoes without bothering to look for his pants. Just like that, in the shoes, his drawers, and an undershirt, he ran to his door and into the hall and down the steps off the veranda, and as he dashed around the side of the house, he guided himself by the light from the moon. No clouds were in the sky that had thundered that evening, the air felt warm and clear after the storm, and wet grass made him slip as he charged toward the thicket nearby. On his knees, about to rise, he saw through the black network of bushes two large fiery circles, circles glowing like live coals, and he told himself, as his body seemed to lock, that he was looking the horse in the eye. Suddenly he knew he couldn’t get up; he saw in the eyes a demonic intelligence. He remembered England and the horses that had glared at him after he bet on them and lost, and through his body he began to feel tingling as if being touched by electric prods. Then a triangular shape moved, the horse’s head, and the incandescent eyes were gone. Leaves rustled, branches snapped, the hooves clopped over stones and dirt. The horse had run off, plunging deeper into the forest, and with the spell from the eyes broken Arthur pulled himself to his feet.
Inside, he banged his fist on June and Cripps’ door. He entered their room when June answered. By the moonlight shining through the curtained window he could see her in her white nightgown, swinging her legs off the bed, and as the slit in the gown parted, he caught a glimpse of bare flesh extending from her thigh to her ankle. This in itself was nothing new since she often wore shorts, but Arthur found himself distracted. He was hit by thoughts he almost never had. Forgetting decorum, he stared at June, then came back to himself and the moment and tactfully glanced down at the floor.
“What’s wrong, Arthur?”
“I saw a horse.”
She had lifted the mosquito net, but on hearing this news she let it go. She began to shake her husband.
“T.J. Get up. T.J.”
Rum after dinner had knocked him out, so she tried slapping his face. Cripps sat up grunting and June let him know what Arthur had said.
“Where is it? Why didn’t you tell me?”
“I’m telling you now.”
“Let’s go. Where did you see it?”
Arthur explained that the horse had woke him by making noise on his side of the house, but he also told Cripps to relax. The horse had fled.
“I couldn’t stop it and I figured today, at dawn, we’d go out looking again.”
Whatever he’d thought, Cripps didn’t care. Cripps had already rolled off the bed. In bare feet and his floppy pajamas, Cripps bolted straight out of the room and Arthur heard him run down the hall, cross the veranda, and thump down the rickety steps.
“I came to you fast as I could,” he told June.
“I know you did.”
She stood at the table lighting an oil lamp, putting a match to the wick, and when the sliver of flame appeared, Arthur saw how different she looked with the braid in her hair undone. It left her hair a tangled mess, a mass of black, and this in conjunction with the rumpled nightgown hiding her lean, suntanned body revived for Arthur the imagery that so rarely flashed through his brain. The tingling like electrical shocks persisted in his arms and legs, and the smile spreading over June’s face implied that she knew what he was thinking.
“Don’t be embarrassed,” she said. “It’s because of the horse.”
She gestured, and he followed her eyes. They led his downward. And there he observed in his drawers a clear enough reason for her grin. He saw bulging under the fabric the obvious sign of his excitement.
“Oh, my goodness,” he said.
June began to laugh, but kindly, gently, and Arthur managed to go along with her despite the warmth filling his cheeks. He knew he must be red as a cherry and turned from her to retreat to his room, but then Cripps came running inside and assailed him for having awakened them late. Cripps was paler than he’d ever been and kept massaging his chest while he spoke, and as his voice became high-pitched he said it might be another few weeks before they had such a perfect sighting.
“He woke us soon as he could,” said June.
“Now you’re on his side?”
“It’s not a matter of sides.”
“Now it’s you and him against me?”
Cripps walked out, slamming the door, and they could hear him going downstairs to the stock of rum he kept in a cabinet.
“Let him,” said June. “Let him make himself sick.”
But Arthur felt he had to leave also, get off by himself and think. He went to his room and put on some pants and sat down at his desk, and in the postscript to his latest letter he told Vaughn what had just happened. ‘It was brief,’ he wrote in conclusion, referring to his encounter with the horse, ‘but isn’t it something that at this instant I feel more alive than I have in years?’
Chapter 7
Alone in the water, some distance from the shore, Arthur floated on his back while gazing at the sky. It had no clouds and looked very blue and the sun resembled a white saucer. He loved just drifting, indulging in a feeling of calm solitude, and he did not worry about how far his floating had carried him from the shore. Swimming, once arduous for him, had become his favorite daily activity and the pay-off was the small but undeniable improvement he could feel in his physical condition.
Smooth as glass, the water had a pleasing buoyancy. He felt so light and flexible in it he could imagine himself a young man again. And in this cove with its white-sand beach, the water almost never had waves: he could float to his heart’s content. The cove provided an escape from Cripps and June with all their fretting and all their stress, and when he wanted the rougher kind of fun, the
pleasure of diving into waves, he would go to other beaches.
And yet...just now....how surprising. He sensed a stirring in the water, something moving near him, and felt the surface begin to tilt. A swell loomed up behind his head and this began to lean over him until it seemed that it had to crash down. Gravity would bring it down, he thought, would have to make it fall on him, and even as he was attempting to spin, the blue hump crested with white did come washing over his face and send him flipping under the water. He choked as the water went into his mouth and filled both his nostrils with burning, and he had to let himself keep on sinking so as not to fight the current.
Arthur came up to the surface. He tread water while wiping one hand over his face. Around him, again, the water was smooth and he looked back toward the horizon, puzzled. That wave had seemed to form out of nothing, and he half-expected to see a ship passing, an ocean liner or maybe a freighter. Instead, there in the deeper water, he saw a thing reddish and slender, topped with two pointy ears. It squinted through the water dripping off its brow, and he made out the upright head of a horse that had its eyes trained on him.
Where had it come from? How had it gotten there? Submerged up to the neck, the horse looked at ease in the water, bobbing up and down ever so slightly as it closed the distance between them. Underneath the surface, Arthur assumed, its legs had to be working hard, but that alone didn’t explain how the horse had gotten out so far or what this creature was doing swimming through the ocean at all. The auburn head never dipped under, the mouth never opened to suck in air, the ears remained pointed and the eyes unwavering as it bore down on him. It seemed unreal to see a horse doing this, coming at him like a monster from the depths, but with the horses on this island he had come to expect the unnatural.
Arthur went into his crawl. Fast as he could, he swam for the shore. Though no other wave reared up and hit him, he found it difficult to swim; an undercurrent not normal to this cove kept pushing against his body. He couldn’t relax because he’d be dragged into deeper water, yet to keep swimming forward into the undertow seemed like a waste of energy. Changing his position, he began to tread water, and he looked back toward the big red horse. It was still bearing down on him, unhindered by the current.
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