Annan Water (5 page)

Bandit jumped a clear round in the horses’ D and E, but was outclassed in the jump-off. He always would be. He’d never go on to great things. Jean gave his ear an affectionate tug as Michael slipped off.

‘We’ll have to get him out hunting again,’ she said. ‘If he doesn’t find an admirer soon he’ll end up in a riding school.’

‘Or in tin cans with happy dogs on the side,’ said Frank.

He wouldn’t though. Michael’s parents were dealers, and in some way they were hard-nosed. They had to be to survive. But they weren’t without scruples. Horses were their livelihood, but they were more than that. Horses were the blood that ran through their veins; the air they breathed; the tireless engines of their dreams. That would never change. Michael knew that beyond the shadow of a doubt, because there had been a moment, just one, when it might have.

I
T WAS THE DAY
of Joanne’s funeral, a year ago, back in Yorkshire. Michael had watched the small coffin descend into the ground and felt nothing. Someone had put a fistful of earth into his hand. It was cold and wet. He couldn’t throw it down on to his sister. He let it drop.

He saw everything that happened, but at a distance, removed from himself and his surroundings; but when the family and their closest friends had gathered again at the farmhouse the truth of what had happened began to breach his defences. The house was silent, but there was an awful noise in Michael’s head. It was the violent sound of a slamming door, caught at the moment of impact and extended into eternity. It was the crash of a finality which ended nothing but would be with them for ever.

That was the moment. No one had mentioned it, but the decision was occupying the entire room, exerting an almost intolerable pressure on their overburdened minds. None of them had slept for days. Michael began to hallucinate. He saw the auction; 450 lots: horses, tack, stable equipment, vehicles. Everything he knew and loved had a paper number glued on to it. He saw himself, beside Frank and Jean, walking away from it all. Into what, his vision did not show him.

Quietly, without a word, Jean broke the tension. She just got up and walked out. A few minutes later, tormented by the continuing silence, Michael went looking for her. He found her in the stable with the pony that had dragged Joanne to her death. Her arms were around his neck and she was crying. She didn’t look up, and Michael didn’t move or speak, but she heard him anyway; heard the huge booming emptiness that still occupied his mind.

‘We’ll have to keep him,’ she said. ‘You can’t sell a pony that has killed a child.’

They would have kept him, too; relegated to an ignored retirement, tagging along with the ever-changing stream of horses in and out of the yard and the fields, looking for attention that would never come his way again. But it didn’t come to that. The next day an old friend of Frank’s, another dealer, arrived in the yard. He bought that pony, and two other 13.2s that Joanne had been bringing on. He paid cash on the nail, top dollar, and took the three away in his lorry.

No one asked what became of them. That man didn’t even deal in ponies; only horses. It was the most generous gesture that Michael had ever seen.

By then, of course, the moment had passed. There were horses to be fed and mucked out; exercised and schooled. They had already pulled what remained of the family back into their orbit. The future had returned to its familiar rails and was rattling on into the darkness.

T
HE TWO HORSES THAT
Jean had jumped at the show had both been placed. The new rosettes were jumbled up among the string of older ones which stretched across the top of the lorry’s windscreen. Beyond them the wipers floated back and forth, leaving drizzling arcs of rain in their wake.

‘You should get new blades,’ said Michael.

Frank was above their heads, sleeping in the transom that was the bunk for the groom’s quarters of the lorry. Wet clothes were heaped up on the middle seat, and the dogs were on top of them, sleeping as well. The heater had begun to make a sinister grinding noise as it battled to keep the big screen demisted. Despite the smell of burning, no heat at all was getting to their feet.

‘We should get a new lorry,’ said Jean.

‘We should get a new life,’ said Michael, only half joking.

He turned his attention to the road atlas open on his lap.

‘It’s the next exit,’ he said.

Jean turned off the motorway. There was a series of soft thuds as the horses moved around, adjusting their balance. They were still two hours from home.

Jean waited until they were through the roundabouts and safely on the open road before she spoke again.

‘You must go back to school, Michael,’ she said.

‘I don’t see the point.’

‘Whether you do or whether you don’t, you still have to go. You have to take your GCSEs.’

Michael searched his mind but the same words were still sitting there, jamming up the works.

‘I don’t see the point.’

He gazed at the road ahead. Raindrops glinted on the top of the glass. His tired eyes blurred them, and he saw the gleam of rings and studs, then the stream of water running down the edges of the windscreen. They drew him in; the dark and the running water.

The sides are steep, the water’s deep …

He tried to pull the plug on the song, but it wouldn’t be silenced. The wiper blades picked up its rhythm, and the white noise of the engine carried the tune.

By night you are a gloomy river.

M
R BURNS KEPT HIM
back after English.

‘I’ve maths next,’ said Michael. ‘I’ll get in trouble.’

‘I’ll drop you in,’ said Mr Burns. ‘Don’t worry.’

He waited until Michael resigned himself, then sat down on a desk. Michael sat on another near the door, and looked at the littered floor.

‘It’s a difficult time for you, isn’t it?’ said Mr Burns.

‘No. Why?’

‘Moving schools, I mean. In the middle of your GCSEs.’

‘Oh,’ said Michael. ‘I suppose.’

‘I haven’t seen any of your essays, have I?’

Michael didn’t do homework. At his old school they’d given up on him. ‘I’ll bring them in tomorrow.’

‘That would be nice,’ said Mr Burns, but Michael could tell he was under no illusions. ‘Are you up to date with your reading?’

‘I can read fine.’

‘I meant your books.’

‘Oh. My books.’ They were all piled in his locker. He only opened them in class, when the teachers asked him to.

‘
Macbeth
?’

‘I’ll read it tonight.’

Mr Burns laughed. ‘You do that. Do you ever read anything else?’

Michael thought about it. At the wall end of the kitchen table there were stacks of show catalogues and magazines, mostly
Horse and Hound
. He glanced through them occasionally. Looking for his name in the show results. Checking out their fortnightly ads.

‘A bit,’ he said.

‘What?’ said Mr Burns. ‘Papers? Comics? Books?’

There was one book in the house.
Veterinary Notes for Horse Owners
. The cover had fallen off. He’d had an idea of buying a new copy for Jean’s birthday. A cold flush went through him. When was her birthday? He couldn’t have missed it, could he?

‘Michael?’

‘Hm?’

Mr Burns sighed. ‘There are some books you can buy. They’re notes on the set texts.’ He wrote the names on a piece of paper as he spoke. ‘I don’t recommend them normally, but I have a feeling you have a bit of catching up to do.’ He handed the page to Michael. ‘They practically write the essays for you.’ Michael crammed the paper inside one of his books and made for the door.

It was still there on Friday evening when he came home from school.

‘Are you going into town tomorrow?’

Jean was drinking milky coffee in the kitchen, on her feet as always, on her way out.

‘I was in today. What did you want?’

‘Some books.’ He wanted to get the veterinary book as well. Her birthday was a month away, but he was afraid of forgetting again. ‘Can we go in again? In the afternoon?’

‘There’s a show tomorrow. I’ll get them for you in the week.’

‘You didn’t say there was a show.’

‘You didn’t ask. There’s one on Sunday as well. Is something wrong?’

‘I was supposed to be giving Annie a lesson.’

‘You can put it off, can’t you? I don’t think there’s anything on next Saturday.’

‘I’ll have to tell her though, won’t I? Have you got Jimmy’s number?’

‘It’ll be in the book,’ said Jean, and was gone.

They didn’t have a phone directory. He tried enquiries, but there were several dozen Souters and he didn’t know the address. In the yard the car started up. He ran out to ask Jean where she was going, how long she would be, whether she could give him a lift to Jimmy’s house. The tail-lights of the trailer were already at the gate, and pulled away before he could reach them.

Several of the horses whickered softly as he returned through the yard, but there was still an hour before feeding time. Back in the house, he phoned Jean’s mobile. It rang a few feet away, from the pocket of her waterproof, slung over the back of the couch. Michael hung up. The kitchen was warm with bottle-gas fug. He took out a bag of frozen chips and bunged the lot in the oven, then dragged the heater into the sitting room. It was cold and damp. His breath made white clouds around his face. He turned on the TV, then turned it off again and took out his copy of
Macbeth
.

‘When shall we three meet again …’

He looked at the empty hearth and put down the book. Already the gas fumes were beginning to suffocate him.

The torch batteries were almost spent. The beam was a feeble pale yellow as it roamed across the piles of junk and almost-junk in the loft above the dairy. He could see his bike leaning against the furthest wall. Getting it out was going to be the problem.

There were rustles and rapid patterings underneath the clutter. Michael called the terrier but she couldn’t, or wouldn’t, come up the steep wooden stairs.

A small tide of irritation quickened his movements. They should have sorted all this stuff out; thrown half of it away instead of carting it wholesale up from Yorkshire. All the broken bits of their lives; the unfixed and the unfixable; the unused and the unusable; the unsold and the unsaleable. There were ripped rugs, snapped head collars, bundles of baler twine. There were job lots of cavessons made from lousy leather, odd riding boots with torn linings, an old ploughing collar with the stuffing bursting out. He began to move things aside. A sackful of drain rods. A felt donkey saddle. The torch beam was fading. Michael called the terrier again, hauled a rotting tarpaulin out of the way. Beneath it was a leaking car battery and a bundle of worn and rusting shoes. Frank always kept them, and never, never reused them.

Michael’s temper was rising. He waded further on in, treading heavily, kicking stuff about to scare off the rats. He threw aside a tiny trike with no seat and a burst bin liner, leaking brushing-boots with missing straps. Why had they kept those? He hauled at a bundle of wooden slats and chicken wire that had once been Joanne’s rabbit hutch. It collapsed in his hands, but it was the last obstacle; he had cleared the way through. In the last, weak glimmer of light from the torch, he looked at his bike.

Both the tyres were flat.

He grabbed the bike by the crossbar and hurled it across the loft to the trap door. It clattered down the stairs, and there was a yelp as it hit the terrier. Michael followed it, jumped over it, ran into the yard.

‘Dad?’

The horses answered hungrily.

‘Dad!’

He wasn’t there. Michael climbed into the lorry and left the door open to keep the inside light on. He pulled the road atlas out of the side pocket, then rummaged in the tool box under the passenger seat until he found what he was looking for.

The foot pump.

H
E HADN’T RIDDEN HIS
bike for months, and it was suddenly too small for him. The gears kept disengaging when he tried to change them, and after the third time of stopping to put the chain back on, he didn’t bother with them any more. The batteries from the radio had powered-up the torch again, but once he left the main road he turned it off and only used it when he encountered the occasional car. The night was still with a misty drizzle, which gathered in his hair and ran into his eyes, making them sting.

The map had been clear enough. There was only one road it could be. It was the sound of the river, though, that made him realize that the lights on his right-hand side must belong to Jimmy’s house. In the dark, he wouldn’t have recognized it.

Jimmy was pleased to see him, but disappointed by the nature of his errand.

‘She liked the riding,’ he said. ‘It meant a lot to her.’

‘I can come next week,’ said Michael.

‘You’d better tell her yourself.’

‘I will. Where is she?’

‘We’ll have to go over.’

‘Over?’

‘Across the river. They live on the other side.’

Of course they did. The shopping. The boat. How had he ever been stupid enough to think that Jimmy was Annie’s father? He must be a friend, helping out, ferrying them across the river and taking them into town. Michael was embarrassed. It should have been obvious from the start. And something else was bothering him as well. Something worse.

‘I’ll hardly come over,’ he said. ‘I haven’t time. If you give me their number I’ll ring her.’

But Jimmy was already getting into his coat. ‘It won’t take long. I’ll give you a lift afterwards. You can throw your bike in the back.’

O
H, BOATMAN, COME, PUT
off your boat, Put off your boat for gold and money …

‘Here, take a turn at the tiller.’

Michael shook his head.

‘I’m all right.’

‘I know you are,’ said Jimmy. ‘It sometimes helps. To get a feel for the boat on the water. Calms the nerves.’

Denial surfaced briefly in Michael’s mind, as automatic as blinking, then sank again, unspoken. Every inch of him betrayed his terror: his rigid posture on the bench, his white knuckles gripping the side of the boat, his wide gaze locked into the current. It was tugging at something deep inside him, like his half-conscious worries about school, like his grandmother’s half-remembered voice.