All the King's Horses (16 page)

‘That’s good to hear,’ said Grandfather. ‘I was disappointed when your mother said she couldn’t manage the drive to the private school I’d picked out for you. But we’ll try again, after your … er, later.’

‘And later, of course, you’ll go to Andover, dear,’ said Grandmother. ‘We have to keep up the family tradition.’ She turned to me. ‘And I was thinking of Abbot Academy for you – though it’s very intense and intellectual.’

‘That’s very nice of you,’ I said. But when I glanced at Colin, I saw we were thinking the same thing: if Grandmother and Grandfather sent us to boarding schools, Mom would be all alone with Grandpa, and if Grandpa got worse, how could she possibly manage?

Grandfather put down his demi-tasse with a little rattle. ‘I think it’s time to open presents,’ he said into the silence. Jack appeared out of nowhere (we always wondered how he did it), helped him out of his chair, and handed him his gold-headed cane; then we all trooped into the living room.

Colin got the expensive science books he had asked for, and a lot of things he hadn’t asked for, including his ‘big present’: a little television that was supposed to go in his bedroom. He was really excited – we were the only kids in Wheelock School who didn’t know what was going on in
Rin-Tin-Tin
or
Zorro
, and that made us outcasts. I got the books I’d asked for: a new series of books by a man called C.S. Lewis and all the
Anne of Green Gables
stories. Then there
were
some beautiful, soft sweaters that weren’t the sort of thing I wore at all – and my ‘big present’: an envelope. I could hardly believe it; I’d asked for riding lessons, but after I’d heard Mom talk to Mr Crewes, I’d almost given up hope of getting them.

‘Go ahead,’ said Grandmother, smiling. ‘Open it.’

I lifted the flap carefully and slid out the card. Inside, under the gold Christmas poem, it said ‘To Sarah at Christmas – a permanent wave and contact lenses. With love from Grandmother and Grandfather Madison.’

I gulped and looked up. ‘Thank you,’ I whispered.

‘Do you know what contact lenses are?’ asked Grandmother eagerly. ‘They’re the latest thing – glasses so small they go in your eyes. It sounds terrible, but they say you get used to them very fast. The eye appointment is tomorrow – think of that! I can’t wait to see how lovely you’ll look when you stop hiding behind your hair and glasses.’

Colin looked up from his TV instructions. ‘She looks just OK to me.’

‘Ah, but just you wait,’ said Grandmother.

Then they opened their presents from us – Colin had carved them little figurines (Grandpa
had
taught him how to do it the summer before he got sick), and I’d made them a book of the poems and stories I had written that year – and they kissed us good night and sent us upstairs with Jack and Maureen, who carried our presents. In my room, Maureen smiled a secret smile and slipped a beautiful flannel nightgown out of the top dresser drawer; she’d made it herself, even the lace around its square neck. I hugged her and gave her the little presents Colin and I had bought for her and Paddy and Jack and Molly with what had been left over from our Christmas money from the Smithes after we got presents for Mom and Grandpa (it wasn’t as goody-goody as it sounds; we always got $50 apiece from Grandmother and Grandfather, and Mom only made us put $35 of that into our savings accounts). She looked at me carefully and asked if anything was wrong, and I said no, I was fine – and she should hurry downstairs for her Christmas with Paddy and the others. So she left, and I stared into the fancy mirror on my dressing-table for a while, then lay down on my bed.

A bit later, I heard my door open, and I looked up guiltily, wiping off my face, because I thought it might be Grandmother. But it was only Colin, so I went on with what I’d been
doing.
There was silence for a second; then I heard him cross the room, and I could feel him standing next to the bed. ‘I wish
I
could give you riding lessons,’ he said finally.

‘It’s not … well, it is, but … get me a kleenex, will you?’

He brought me the whole box from the dressing-table. Sometimes Colin was all right.

‘Maybe it won’t be too bad,’ he said as I mopped up. ‘I read somewhere that people actually see better with contact lenses, especially if their glasses are coke bottles like yours.’ He jumped back as I punched at him. ‘Tell you what! I’m going to get into the nifty bathrobe Jack and the others gave me; then I’m going to set up my TV. Sneak to my room in half an hour, and we’ll watch some show.’

I said I would; he’d tried to cheer me up, and I knew he was burning to show off the TV. After he left, I changed into my new nightgown and washed my face in the bathroom that was all mine, then went back into my room. It was very nice – Grandmother had had it redone just for me, with a canopied bed and the dressing-table and lace curtains and paintings of beautiful women in long white dresses – but I didn’t feel like spending a whole half hour in it, so I wandered down the long hall towards Colin’s
room,
looking at the ghosts of myself that followed me along the oiled wood panelling, and wondering what Mom and Grandpa were doing at home.

Just before I got to the door of Grandfather’s den, the light in it went on. I froze, because we weren’t supposed to be up, but there was no sound of footsteps or sitting down or opening a paper, so after a few minutes I peeked around the corner. The room was full of Grandfather – rows of matching books, a glass-doored cabinet filled with trophies, piles of
Wall Street Journals
, a leather easy chair a bit cracked on the arms, a desk covered with typed papers in manila folders, the smell of pipe smoke – but there was nobody in it. Which meant that, though you’d never, never expect faeries in this house … I waited for some other sign, but there was only the light, burning away invitingly. Finally, I tiptoed in, holding my breath. It was against the rules for anyone to go in but Grandfather; he’d never said so, but we knew.

I looked over the books, which were mostly about law, then edged down to the trophy case, listening nervously to the silence and wondering what could possibly interest faeries in this room. It was kind of neat; the trophies turned out to be for golf, which I hadn’t known Grandfather
played,
and behind them were framed diplomas from Andover, Harvard and Yale Law School, which I hadn’t known about either … but what did faeries care about those sorts of things? I was about to tiptoe back into the hall when I saw two pictures on the desk. One of them was of Grandfather and Dad, at what must have been Dad’s Andover graduation, because Dad’s face was lots younger and more awkward than it was in the pictures we had at home. The other was Grandmother and Grandfather’s wedding picture, and it gave me a real jolt. For one thing, I’d always thought of them as being the same age, because they were both old, but in the picture, Grandfather’s hair was already a bit grey, and Grandmother couldn’t have been twenty yet. For another, though Grandmother was still pretty good-looking and I knew she’d been a debutante, I hadn’t realized she’d been
that
beautiful – I mean Marilyn Monroe and Audrey Hepburn and Grace Kelly all rolled into one, except 1920s. What really hit me, though, was the way Grandfather was looking at her, which, when I glanced back at the picture of him and Dad, was the same way he was looking at Dad. I stood there, trying to think what it was about that look that made me feel sad … and the light went out.

I scurried out into the hall and ducked into the empty room next door, my heart thumping wildly as Grandmother gave some sort of orders to Maureen and Jack downstairs. Nobody came up the steps, though, so I snuck down the hall to Colin’s room, which it was about time I should do anyway. But that expression of Grandfather’s went with me – and suddenly part of my mind was not in his house, but in the too-bright sunshine of a big show, and Grandpa was talking to the owner of Go For Broke, this great Thoroughbred that had just won a big hunter championship. The owner shook Grandpa’s hand and the rider’s hand and patted the horse; then he walked away, and everybody he passed tipped their hats and said congratulations until he reached his car and drove off alone. Grandpa looked after him, then down at me. ‘Funny, you meet quite a few like him in this business,’ he said. ‘Every man tips his cap to him, and they mean it, surely – but there’s no-one that likes him.’ I nodded, because I could see exactly what he meant. But it hadn’t occurred to me until just now, when I saw those pictures, that that sort of man might
want
people to like him.

I went into Colin’s room, thinking so hard that I forgot I was going to ask him if he thought it was possible They’d followed us from home. But
probably
I would have forgotten anyway, because he was curled up on his window-seat, looking out into the dark.

‘What about that show?’ I asked, wondering what was wrong.

‘Sorry,’ he said. ‘I can’t find it.’

‘Well, turn the dial, for Pete’s sake! Isn’t that what you do?’

‘It’s not the show I can’t find,’ he said. ‘It’s the TV. It seems to be in television limbo.’

I stared at him. ‘You mean—?’

He nodded.

‘Holy cow! What’ll we tell Grandfather when we have to take it home?’

‘It won’t be a problem. Here, come stand in the hall with me.’

I did, of course, and when we looked back into the bedroom, there was the TV, sitting on his desk, packed and ready to go. As soon as we stepped over the door sill, it disappeared.

‘And there you have it,’ said Colin, sighing. ‘Too bad. I was looking forward to having a normal childhood.’

‘I wonder what They think of perms,’ I muttered. ‘That’s as normal as you can get.’

‘Omigosh!’ Colin sat on the bed. ‘Look, we’ve got to talk Grandmother out of it. It’s a dumb idea anyway – your hair curls all by
itself,
or at least it would if it was shorter.’

‘You’re going to talk
Grandmother
out of doing something fashionable?’

‘That’s a problem, all right,’ admitted Colin. He thought for a minute, then grinned. ‘I got it – I can say the boys in my class think permed hair is uncool, and the older guys only date girls with the new, stylish cuts.’

‘But that’s not true!’

‘So? We’re not talking about truth,’ said Colin. ‘We’re talking about something Grandmother will listen to. And you know she’ll listen to that.’

I did know, but I was surprised that Colin did. ‘OK,’ I said. ‘It’s worth a try, anyway.’

‘You bet it is,’ said Colin. ‘If we let Grandmother turn you into a poodle, and They don’t like it, They might not let you back in Faerie. And I don’t think I could manage to get Grandpa back without you.’

He really was an all right brother.

It worked. The moment Grandmother heard that popular girls didn’t have permed hair, she said we’d get me a really good cut. So that’s what I got. Nobody wanted me to get it but Grandmother – the hairdressers all said what a shame it was to cut off all that beautiful thick
hair,
and the poor woman who did the job was practically crying when she finished, because her thinning scissors and clamps and things kept disappearing when she reached for them – but Grandmother was firm, and what I had left when it was all over was the most conservative cut I could get her to agree to, and a two-foot braid of what had been cut off. It looked awful with glasses, but on the way home, we stopped at the contact lens place (it was one of those fancy places where you can get your lenses the next day, if you pay enough), and I practised putting them in and taking them out, and finally, I wore them back to Grandmother and Grandfather’s house. I’d planned on going upstairs and hiding my head under a pillow, but Grandfather and Colin had just gotten home from the Boston Museum of Science, and they were in the front hall when we came in.

‘Here she is!’ said Grandmother proudly. ‘Isn’t she beautiful?’

They both turned around and stared.

‘Jiminy Christmas,’ said Colin. ‘They really did a job on you.’

‘Oh hush, Colin!’ said Grandmother.

Grandfather gave me a long look, and he almost smiled, which was something he didn’t do
very
often. ‘Your brother certainly got all the Madison genes,’ he said.

‘I’ll say,’ said Colin. ‘You look just like Mom, except with Grandpa’s green eyes.’

All of a sudden, I thought of what Mom had told Mr Crewes about what Grandfather and Grandmother had said she was, and how they must still think so, because she was all alone at home with Grandpa instead of here with all of us. And something – maybe it was Them – made me look Grandfather straight in the eye. ‘That’s OK with me,’ I said. ‘Mom’s really pretty.’

Grandfather shifted from one foot to the other, the way Colin does when he’s embarrassed. ‘Yes, of course she is,’ he said.

There was a funny sort of silence; then Colin said, ‘Would it be OK if Sarah and I went down to the beach?’

‘Good heavens!’ said Grandmother. ‘What are you thinking of? It’s much too windy!’

‘Not if we stay between those two dunes at the end of the boardwalk.’

‘You’ve found that place, have you?’ said Grandfather. ‘That was your father’s favourite haunt. Yes, go ahead.’

Grandmother fussed, but we both knew whose word really went, so we zipped upstairs to put on real clothes. I got dressed really fast, but it took
me
a long time to get the contact lenses out, and when I finally ran down the hall to meet Colin, Grandfather was just going into his den.

‘Sarah …’ he said.

I stopped. ‘Yes?’

‘Come in a minute. I’d like to talk to you.’

He walked to his desk and eased himself stiffly into the big chair behind it; I stood on the other side of it, looking at the pattern on the rug and missing my hair.

For maybe a whole minute, he didn’t say anything; downstairs, I could hear Colin fidgeting around in the hall. Then he cleared his throat. ‘About your mother and your grandfather.’ He picked up his pen, not paying attention to it. ‘Er … how are things at home?’

All sorts of thoughts crowded into my head – Mom crying as she paid the bills, the way Grandfather smiled at Grandmother in the picture, Grandpa getting worse and worse and nobody knowing what to do, Grandfather and Colin at the Museum of Science, Mr Crewes, boarding schools – but they were so jumbled that all I could do was stare at the law books and the trophies and the desk, and his fingers, clumsily screwing and unscrewing the top of the pen. Finally I realized he’d think I was an idiot if I didn’t answer, so I shook myself and said
‘Everything’s
fine, thank you.’