Gay Cavalier

by Alex Stuart

  "You know I will."

  His hand found hers. It was very cold. "Yes, I know. I—" He pulled her closer. "Deirdre, I'll be laid up for some time. Frank Chalmers says I've smashed my pelvis — that'll mean weeks, months perhaps. Do you think you'll be able to carry on?"

  "Of course I will, Daddy," Deirdre assured him, "I shan't be alone, I'll have Paddy. And Sean."

  "All the same — there's that damned overdraft. This couldn't have come at a worse time, so it couldn't. You — Deirdre child, did me little scheme work? Did you sell Moonbeam to Carmichael?"

  The anxiety in his eyes tore at Deirdre's heart. Dr. Chalmers had told her to relieve his mind, if she could. But she couldn't lie to him: Moonbeam wasn't sold. He was very far from being sold. She drew in her breath in a little sigh.

  "I — he's interested. He—"

  "I'm buying the horse, Captain Sheridan." Alan Carmichael was kneeling beside her, Deirdre realized, with an odd sense of relief. She turned to thank him but he motioned her to silence. "He's just what I want. I'll give your daughter my cheque this evening, if that's in order.'" Dennis inclined his dishevelled fair head. "It's very much in order, Colonel. I'm glad you're taking him. You'll not regret it, he's a good stamp of youngster and you'll get a point-to-pointer that'll win you a few useful races, if you handle him right. His sire was a National winner — Merry Marcus. I have him at my stud. I hope you'll look over my place some time, if you're interested, My daughter will show you round."

  "Thank you, sir," said Colonel Carmichael gravely. "I'll take advantage of your invitation at the first opportunity." He rose and touched Deirdre's arm. "The ambulance has come."

  They stood, side by side as, very carefully, the bearers, assisted by Dr. Chalmers' loaded Dennis on to their stretcher. When the slow procession was making its way back to the road and the waiting ambulance, Deirdre ventured: "Colonel Carmichael, I — I'm very grateful for your kindness. And for what you said about Moonbeam. It — it relieved his mind, he was worrying about it, you see, and—"

  "Miss Sheridan, I'm a neighbour of yours, you know. It was the least I could do, in the circumstances. And I meant what I said — I'll take the horse. I'd like to."

  "But—"

  "Please! We'll go into sordid financial details later, shall we?" He took her arm. "Your groom's on his way home with both your horses and I've given mine to one of the men. So, if you'd let me drive you home, my car's here." He gestured to the farm building below them. "This is my place — Manor Farm. You probably hadn't realized. I'll take you in for a wash and a drink."

  "I ought to go with my father—" Deirdre began but he shook his head.

  "The doctor's going with him. There's nothing you can do. Let me drive you home. Then, when you've changed, you can go along to the hospital. You can't go like that, can you?"

  Deirdre looked down at her stained breeches and mud-spattered boots. "No, I — I suppose not. But I won't wait for a drink or — or anything. Though it's kind of you. I'd like to get home."

  "Then you shall, at once." He retained his hold of her arm and she was glad of its support, for her legs seemed scarcely able to hold her up and she was trembling. Colonel Carmichael led her to his car and, ignoring her protests, sent one of his farm workers into the house for a glass of brandy. When it came, he stood over her whilst she sipped it. Then he got in beside her and started the engine. "I'll get you back in no time, Miss Sheridan. You've had the very deuce of a shock, so just sit back and relax. Shut your eyes. I'm quite a safe driver, I promise you."

  Deirdre obeyed him. It was a relief to let this quiet, competent man look after her. But, as they sped swiftly down the deserted country lane, it occurred to her that Sean would probably be in the house when they reached it. Perhaps there was no reason for her to worry, but Sean had behaved oddly. And after Colonel Carmichael's kindness…

  She said, opening her eyes again to look at him: "Colonel Carmichael, you — that is, I think it's possible that you know my brother Sean. He was in Korea and—"

  He turned to face her, easing his foot from the accelerator. His expression was inscrutable and his voice devoid of feeling as he replied: "Yes, Miss Sheridan, I know your brother Sean, We met in Korea."

  CHAPTER THREE

  Deirdre's question put Alan Carmichael in something of a quandary, because he had no means of knowing how much her brother had told her.

  He decided, looking down pityingly into her white, strained face, that she was in no state to listen to long explanations at the moment. Her father's accident had come as a severe shock to her and his own remarks — made just before Sheridan's old groom had caught up with them — had not been kind.

  He regretted them now — yet, at the time, they had seemed justified. Even to himself, Alan Carmichael couldn't have explained the keenness of his disappointment on learn-that this charming girl, who rode so well and who had seemed so frank and friendly, had sought his company for no other reason than to sell him a horse.

  Though he understood it better now, of course. Her father had devised the plan and the girl, whose devotion to him was obvious and touching, had merely done as she was told.

  Poor child! She had probably hated it as much as he had. He wanted to think so, anyway, because she was a delightful girl…

  It was a pity about the brother — one of those extraordinary coincidences one was always reading about in books. He had never expected to run into young Sean Sheridan again — certainly not here. Sean had every reason to dislike him, Alan reflected ruefully. He would have to try and see the boy, put matters right between them, if he could. His thoughts went reluctantly back to the remembered hell of that ghastly, shell-torn hillside beyond the Imjin River, and he shivered, because the memory wasn't pleasant.

  He had done what he had believed to be his duty — no more and, God help him, no less. As battalion commander, it had been his duty to make the weary handful of men under his command go on fighting, despite the fact that they had been fighting for almost forty-eight hours without sleep, despite the fact that they were cut off and weren't likely to be relieved. Somehow he had to get them out, and the only way was to keep them on their feet: all of them—cooks, drivers, medical orderlies, as well as his own infantry soldiers — because the alternative was capture and this he had sought, at all costs, to avoid.

  He had to have vehicles to evacuate the wounded, and he'd had no idea that the desperate, exhausted young R.E.M.E. Corporal who had defied his orders had been hit. How could he have guessed Sheridan had given no hint of it, hadn't even voiced a protest or attempted to excuse himself.

  "Cowardice in the face of the enemy, Corporal — that's a court-martial offence, you know. What have you to say for yourself?"

  "Nothing, sir. Only that I can't go on."

  "Damn it, take a pull at yourself, man! We're all in this together. What would happen if we all packed up?" He'd argued, Alan remembered with a pang, tried to convince the boy that he had to go on or none of them would ever get out, certainly not the wounded. But Sheridan hadn't listened. He'd just crouched there, shaking his head and repeating: "I'm sorry, sir, I can't…" over and over again.

  It hadn't been until long after the yelling horde of Chinese had overrun their position and dragged them off to a hopeless, tortured captivity, that Alan had understood. The boy hadn't been a coward, he simply hadn't been able to walk.

  But by that time the harm had been done and there'd been no way of undoing it. Bitterness had eaten into the boy's soul, and when they'd met again as prisoners, nearly a year later, circumstances — Alan Carmichael's lips tightened as he recalled them — had made it impossible to explain then. Of course he had withdrawn the charges, when he was released, but that was all he had done.

  He returned his gaze to the road. "Yes," he said again, quietly, "I knew your brother in Korea."

  Deirdre, studying her companion's face, could find no clue in his expression. And she was puzzled. Colonel Carmichael had admitted knowing Sean in Korea, yet his tone w
asn't that of a man claiming casual acquaintance with a war-time comrade. It was… guarded, as if the admission itself were one he was reluctant to make.

  And Sean himself had denied it, just as unconvincingly. Even allowing for the difference in their ranks, it was odd.

  She said, forcing a light note into her voice: "Sean is paying us a visit, Colonel Carmichael. He — he'll probably be at home now. He only came to the Camp for an hour or so, to make a few sketches. I don't think he stayed to watch the paperchase."

  "Oh?" Colonel Carmichael's hands, slim and brown and supple, moved on the steering wheel. He would have to see the boy, of course, but this scarcely seemed the most propitious moment to do so. He suggested, uncertainly: "Then he won't know about your father's accident, will he?"

  "No." Her voice wasn't steady and her lips quivered. "I'll have to tell him."

  "Look, I shouldn't worry too much, Miss Sheridan. About your father, I mean." There was warmth in his tone now, warmth and sympathy, Deirdre noticed. "He's taken a nasty toss but it could have been a lot worse. A fractured pelvis isn't all that serious, you know. Of course, it'll take time to mend, but he's in excellent hands — Dr. Chalmers has a fine reputation, I'm told, especially for fracture work."

  "Oh, yes, he has." Her companion's confidence was infectious and Deirdre's heart lifted a little. "He's our family doctor so I know him quite well and so does Daddy. I'm sure he'll do everything he can."

  "I'm sure he will," Alan Carmichael agreed. He added: "Will you be in charge of the Stud, whilst your father's laid up?"

  "I — well, yes, I suppose so. I'll have Paddy O'Brien, of course. He's our Stud groom."

  "And your brother?" Colonel Carmichael pursued, his eyes still on the road. "I imagine he'll help you." He swung the powerful car right at the King's Martin fork and slowed down to enter the village street.

  "Sean works in London," Deirdre answered. She felt impelled, for some reason, to defend Sean, although her companion's tone hadn't been critical. "Naturally he'll stay on, if I ask him to. Only he doesn't ride now. He was very badly wounded in Korea. But I expect you know that?" She had intended her words as a question but, as Colonel Carmichael did not reply to it, she went on: "He's trying to establish himself as an artist and he's done very well. Some of his pictures were hung at the Burdyke Exhibition and they attracted quite a lot of notice."

  That, of course, was a slight exaggeration — there had been a column in the local paper, a very brief mention in Art and the Horselover — but Colonel Carmichael wasn't likely to know this. She glanced at him swiftly but, as before, his expression was unreadable.

  He volunteered, noncommittally: "I'm sure you're very proud of him, then. Er — could you direct me? This is a bit out of my area, I'm afraid." He hoped, fervently, that Sean would not be in the house when they reached it. But if he were…

  "We turn left at the crossroads," Deirdre told him, "and the drive's on the left, with a notice beside it. I'll tell you when we come to it."

  Alan Carmichael thanked her gravely and was silent until they halted in front of the drive gates. Deirdre prepared to get out and open them but, a hand on her arm, he restrained her. "You sit still, I'll do this." He jumped out, his movements neat and deft, the co-ordinated movements of a man in the peak of physical condition. He seemed, despite the long day they had had, as fresh and alert as if he were only at the start of it. Deirdre, herself drained of energy by shock and anxiety, was again conscious of relief: both her father and Sean depended on her so often to make practical decisions for them that she found the sensation of being cared for and considered a new and pleasing one.

  Seated beside her once more, Colonel Carmichael looked about him approvingly. "You've got a lovely little place here." His eyes, she saw, were on the brood mares, in the paddock beside the drive, several of them with foals at foot. "And some splendid bloodstock. I"—he turned to smile at her—"I hesitate to suggest that you might need any help, but if you should, whilst your father is in hospital, please don't be afraid to call on me. I've had no experience of training, of course, but the Army has at least turned me into a reasonably competent book-keeper. And I could ride exercise for you, in the early mornings."

  "Oh, I—it's awfully good of you." Deirdre was so touched by his offer that she was stammering. His behaviour since the accident had been so complete a contradiction of her first impression of him that she was bewildered. "I — I don't know what to say, how to thank you. You've been so very kind, I—"

  "Please!" He reddened. "I was rather rude to you a little while ago. I'm trying to make up for it. And my offer of assistance is perfectly sincere, so do please take me up on it, if I can be of any possible use to you during the next few weeks. I'm quite free, as it happens. I've moved into Manor Farm, but the outgoing tenant is still farming it until Michaelmas, by arrangement. It suits both of us. I'm aiming to run it as a T.T. dairy farm, you see, and I can't start until I've had the buildings converted and passed, which means I'll be at a loose end till well into the summer. So I'd really be glad of something to occupy my spare time."

  Dreams, he thought — the dreams he'd had, during his long and bitter captivity. How often he had visualized the farm he was going to buy! And Manor Farm was exactly the sort of place he'd always wanted — solid, weathered brick buildings: well-watered grazing land: good, easily worked arable and a lovely old Tudor farmhouse, to which he had lost his heart as soon as he'd set eyes on it. Mellow red brick, mullioned windows and sun-warmed thatch, with wallflowers growing primly in the garden and rose bushes and ramblers clustered about the door in riotous profusion — a little bit of England, a place to dream about indeed. And it was his…

  Only, of course, his dreams had always included the woman with whom he had hoped to share all this, the woman he would one day make his wife. It was time he married, time he settled down. But two years in a prison camp was a long time. One lost touch and one's ideas changed: girls one had known and imagined oneself in love with, in the old days, no longer stirred one's pulses when one saw them again. Having waited for so long, it would be better, he decided, smiling at his own thoughts, to wait a little longer and find the right girl. Though probably —Alan glanced at the girl beside him and drew in his breath sharply—probably, when he did meet her, he'd be like a lot of other men he knew, who had spent half their lives abroad—he'd fall very swiftly in love with her, he'd have no time for doubts or second thoughts. Or even practical considerations, if it came to that. Deirdre Sheridan was very young—how old had Penelope told him she was? Eighteen… nineteen? He couldn't remember. A child, anyway. Scarcely out of the schoolroom.

  But she was a sweet child: she had courage, a typically Irish, quite indefinable charm which delighted him, and a fine, proud temper. She attracted him very much. He said impulsively:

  "I do mean it, you know—I'd like to help," and knew he sounded wooden, which wasn't at all the way he'd meant to phrase his offer. But after a year in solitary confinement, he'd lost the art of making conversation, especially to a girl like this. And she was young Sheridan's sister, which didn't make it any easier.

  They drew up in the yard and Alan looked about him, approving of what he saw: the rows of white-painted loose-boxes, the clean, cobbled yard, the house—Tudor, like his own—half hidden behind a screen of trees, the vast barn. A covered passageway led to the back of the house and he parked the car beside it, turning to smile at his passenger. "Any time you need me," he urged, "you've only to say so."

  "It's awfully kind of you," Deirdre repeated.

  "I assure you, it's not. Naturally you won't want me whilst your brother's here to keep an eye on things. But when he goes back—" He switched off his engine and came round to Deirdre's side, to help her to alight. "I see your horsebox has returned."

  He gestured and Deirdre, following the direction of his pointing finger, saw that Sean's small car was parked behind it, facing the row of looseboxes. "And my brother's here too," she said uneasily. "I—that is, you'll come i
n, won't you? For tea or—or a drink?" She tried to sound hospitable but she was worried. To her relief, Alan Carmichael shook his head.

  "I think not, thank you." He spoke firmly. "I'd better be getting back, if you'll excuse me." He took her hand between his own and smiled down at her. "I do hope all will go well with your father, Miss Sheridan. I'll ring up later, if I may, to enquire. And—about the horse—"

  "The horse?" Deirdre echoed, staring at him.

  "Moonbeam," he prompted gently. "I'm buying him, remember?"

  "Oh, yes, of course. I—I'm so sorry, I—"

  "You're upset," he told her, concerned, "most understandably so. It can wait. What you need now is to get into a good hot bath and drink lashings of hot, sweet tea. You've got someone—a cook or housekeeper—to see to things?"

  She nodded. "Oh, yes, there's Bridget, she's our cook."

  "I'll call her for you." He was propelling her towards the house, brows drawn together in an anxious frown, when Bridget herself appeared, plump and apple-cheeked and visibly agitated, at the door of her kitchen. She gathered Deirdre into her arms, clucking over her like a ruffled mother hen.

  "Ach, Miss Deirdre dear, so 'tis back at last you are, thanks be to God that you're safe and well and no harm come to you!"

  She spared Deirdre's escort scarcely a glance, drawing the girl after her into the cosy, sweet-smelling warmth of the kitchen. "I've the kettle on," she announced, " 'twill be tea you're wanting and those muddy boots off you, too. Come, child, come — and don't be after catching your death now, in this damp air."

  Colonel Carmichael waited only to see her ensconced in Bridget's own armchair beside the fire and then, with a brief smile, he took his leave.

  A moment or so later, Deirdre heard the engine of his car spring to life. Bridget heard it too and she turned from her tea-making, eyes bright with curiosity.

  "And who was the fine gentleman, Miss Deirdre? I was thinking he'd stop for a cup of tea. Should I have asked him?"