Dead Man Riding (15 page)

*   *   *

That night when Imogen, Midge and I were in our room, the moon through the window was so bright that we didn't need to light a candle. I was sorting out things for the ride. Luckily I'd brought with me the rational dress designed for bicycling. In fact, we'd all scraped together the money to have the outfits made back in Oxford, though hadn't so far dared to wear them there. They consisted of a pair of bloomers in fine tweed ending just below the knee, worn with boots and thick stockings, and a rather dashing jacket to match the bloomers, hip length with bone buttons and green facing on the lapels, reminiscent of a German huntsman's costume. I put mine on and swaggered up and down in it a bit, so the other two tried theirs on as well and the swagger turned into a kind of country dance without music, on the bare board floor in stockinged feet in the moonlight, whirling and spinning each other round, bowing and clapping palm to palm, but quietly so as not to disturb the Old Man if he happened to be down below in his tack room. I thought he probably was and wondered what he'd make of the slip and slide of our feet over his head. The dance got wilder, the spins giddier until the three of us collapsed on the hay pallets, breathless and weak from silent laughter. After a long silence, Imogen spoke.

‘Nell, that mare…'

‘Well?'

‘She didn't look as if…' Such a long silence that Midge told her to get on with it. ‘Well, would you say she was
enjoying
it?'

Midge giggled and said it didn't look like it, but there was something in Imogen's voice that told me she needed a careful answer.

‘I suppose it depends what you mean by enjoy and whether animals experience things like human beings do.'

‘Aren't we animals too?' She was staring up at the shadows on the ceiling, her face still flushed from the dance. ‘Do you think women enjoy the sexual act or need it like men do?'

‘I think they should,' I said, knowing it wasn't an answer.

‘It must be awful to be a man,' explosively, from Imogen. It was a new and surprising doctrine. Up to then, we'd all agreed that ours was a world designed for and by men, and everything came to them unfairly easily. Midge asked what she meant and Imogen poured it out as if it had been on her mind for a long time.

‘Wanting something so much, being ill for not having it … knowing somebody you care for and who cares for you could give it to you if she wanted to … if she had the courage…'

‘I'm not sure that it really makes men ill,' I said. I was, after all, a doctor's daughter.

‘But it must be torment, wanting something so much all the time you can hardly concentrate on anything else. Don't you remember how desperately, really desperately, we all wanted to go to college when we were about sixteen?'

‘It's hardly the same thing is it?' Midge said.

‘But wanting something – wanting anything so much. You must see what I'm talking about.'

I said, ‘I assume Alan has asked you to take part in sexual activity with him.' I really didn't know how else to put it. After all, most of what we knew – and it was precious little – came from high-minded and carefully phrased books or discussions with other women who knew no more than we did.

‘Not yet, no. Not exactly, but … You see, sometimes when he kisses me I feel I want … really want it and not just because he does. Then I think of that horse and so on and whether it will hurt a lot and … Oh, I'm such a coward.'

I started assuring her that no, she wasn't, but Midge cut in. ‘What would happen if you did and got
enceinte?
' (Even advanced women still put ‘pregnancy' in French.)

‘I asked that. Alan says there are … ways.'

Which just showed how far the discussion with Alan had gone. We talked about it for a bit longer and came to no conclusion, beyond that it was a very serious step for a woman and that Imogen should think carefully before doing anything and she said she was thinking, of course she was. Only I remembered certain evenings in Alpine meadows and what undoubtedly would have happened if his father hadn't taken him away, and knew that there were limits on what thinking could do to help you. So I went to sleep, because next morning the Old Man had ordered us all to be up early for the ride.

*   *   *

We assembled in the stable yard soon after it was light, around five o'clock. The aim was to do a fair part of the ride before the sun got too hot, then find somewhere in the shade to rest and water the horses and finish the journey to the sea in the evening. The horses we'd be using had been kept in overnight and were looking out of their loose boxes. There were saddles ready on the loose-box doors, bridles on hooks beside them. Robin was doing most of the work. When he saw me he grinned, happy as a schoolboy on holiday. I tried not to imagine him helping to carry Mawbray's dead son as easily as he was carrying hay bales and water buckets. For these two days, I was going to enjoy myself and try to forget about it. The horse I'd been allocated was a palomino mare named Sheba. When I went into her box to tack her up she turned to me confidingly and nudged her nose against the green lapels of my jacket. It was a while since I'd had anything to do with horses, but Sheba was cooperative and by the time the Old Man called from the stable yard to come out and mount up we were ready. It was the first chance I'd had to see my companions on horseback. Nathan was hauling himself on to the back of the good old cob, Bobbin, not very expertly with a lot of laughter from Midge who'd come out to see us off. Meredith was already mounted on an Arab mare about a hand taller than mine and looked more at home than I expected. Next to him, Alan was adjusting the girth of a useful-looking dark bay gelding I'd seen in the paddock with the mares, not pure-bred Arab. Imogen was standing beside him, their heads close together. Robin led another bay gelding out of a box. This one looked a handful, raw-boned, around sixteen hands high and probably young. It tried to bite him when he tightened the girth and whirled round and round when he put his foot in the stirrup, but he said something to it that calmed it enough to let him swing himself up with the easy grace of a man who spent more time with horses than human beings.

The Old Man had disappeared for a while, but as soon as Robin was settled in the saddle he came riding back into the yard on Sid, or Seawave Supreme to give him the title he deserved from the way he looked that morning. The Old Man was hatless, his hair and beard gleaming silver in the sun as bright as the stallion's mane and he had the air of a patriarch come to lead his people. He looked all round at us and if I hadn't guessed he was short sighted I'd have been sure he was checking every strap, buckle and curb chain. He nodded at Kit, who was standing by the wall of the yard with Dulcie and Midge on either side of him.

‘Look after them well, now. Don't stand for any nonsense.'

Alan had got himself into the saddle by then, none too expertly, so it was just as well the Old Man wasn't looking. Imogen had a hand on the horse's neck and as Alan adjusted the reins he took her hand, leaned down and dropped a quick kiss on the back of it. She bent her head and the back of her neck blushed pink. I don't know what made me look towards Kit at that point. Perhaps the sheer intensity of the way he was staring at them both was a kind of magnet. His head was up, his whole body tense and his anger seemed to sear the air like a lightning flash. I don't know if anybody else saw it – certainly not Alan and Imogen because they were too absorbed in each other. Here was yet another complication to our philosophical summer. It seemed clear from that look that Alan and Kit's long-standing friendship might not survive the choice she'd made. I thought that if she'd chosen Kit, the brilliant one, Alan might have accepted it more easily. But Kit wasn't used to taking second place to his friend and hurt pride was part of his loss. Still, I didn't have long to worry about it because the Old Man raised his riding whip as a signal and we were away, in no particular order down the lane to the mares' paddock, where Robin opened and closed the gate for us without needing to dismount, though his big bay was still trying to spin round.

We went at a walk alongside the river, with the loose horses leaving their grazing to crowd beside us. This early, there was still a wide band of mist marking the line of the little river. The only sounds were the water, the horses' hooves swishing through the long damp grass and the clink of bits and curb chains. We passed the bathing place and came to a narrow gate at the bottom of the paddock. Here we had to wait, while the Old Man and Robin chivvied the loose horses away. Once that was done, Robin held the gate open while we filed through. I happened to be next to the Old Man and noticed that he was looking back uphill to the house, with a closed-in look on his normally expressive face, as if thinking hard about something. Then he saw me looking at him and grinned.

‘You happy with Sheba, then?'

‘Very. She's beautiful.'

‘Let her have her way when it doesn't matter and insist on having your way when it does, then you'll get on fine – like any woman.'

I didn't try to answer that. The river turned a bend, round the bottom of a wooded slope. I was pretty sure that we were off the Old Man's land now and on to Major Mawbray's. Just as we rounded the bend, Sheba gave a little shy at something up in the wood. I glanced there, expecting to see a squirrel or pigeon and did my own equivalent of a shy. There was a man standing there, watching us. He was no more than a few yards away from us on the other side of the stream, but so nearly hidden in the leaves and so still that even the other horses had gone by without noticing. He was wearing a tweed suit and brown felt hat but was unmistakably the same man I'd seen two days before on the magistrates' bench, Major Mawbray. Just for a moment his eyes met mine and the enmity in them was so stark that I almost cried out. Sheba, catching the alarm, surged forward and our eye contact was broken. When I looked back there was no sign of the man, just leaves. I decided to say nothing to the others. I wondered how he knew we'd be passing that way or whether he was out there early every morning. Was he looking for his son or looking for the man who'd killed his son? It was some time later, not until we'd had our first canter and the sun was high, before I got the chill feeling out of my spine.

*   *   *

After that, we had the ride of a lifetime. The Old Man was grandly unconscious of the laws of trespass and seemed to take it for granted that we could ride where we wanted as long as we didn't trample crops or scare cattle. Nobody seemed to resent it. Once we were a few miles clear of Studholme Hall people working in fields waved to us and children on the outskirts of villages ran to see the horses, not to yell insults. I hadn't realised until then how the feeling of being besieged and at odds with our neighbours had grown on us in such a short time, and being clear of it and back in the normal world made the air smell even sweeter. We followed the river down for a while then struck westwards and crossed the railway line. The Old Man halted Sid between the rails and stood guard until we were all across, as if his presence would be enough to stop a coal train in its tracks. Then we took a long loop to the north to avoid Aspatria and its coalmines.

The land flattened out as we got nearer the coast and there were long stretches where we could gallop, the horses surging along in a herd with manes flying, racing each other. Robin's big bay was usually in the lead at the end, with competitive little Sid not far behind. Alan's gelding hated being passed by the two smaller mares that Meredith and I were riding, but had to put up with it. On one of these occasions Meredith looked at me as we passed Alan on either side, so closely that our stirrup irons almost clashed, and gave me a smile of sheer triumph and devilment – most unphilosophic. Invariably Nathan and Bobbin ran way at the back of the field, still plodding at their lumbering canter with Nathan bouncing around in the saddle long after the rest of us had stopped for breath. It didn't bother Nathan at all. Best fun in a long time, he said. Sheba was by far the best horse I'd ever ridden, so responsive that it seemed I only had to think something and she'd do it. Like most Arabs her stamina was amazing. Minutes after a long gallop she'd be raising her head and sniffing the air for the next challenge. My rational dress turned out to be just as suitable for riding as for bicycling and the balance and freedom of sitting astride convinced me that side-saddles were an invention of men for making sure that women couldn't outride them.

At midday, with the sun hot and the horses and ourselves bothered by clouds of flies, we stopped by a little stream in a grove of willows and alders. We watered the horses then untacked them and let them roll in the grass while we settled on the bank under the trees. I hadn't thought to bring food and didn't know whether anybody else had, but anyway it was too hot for eating. After the early start most of us dozed or, more probably, slipped into that happy state where you're too near sleep to speak or move but just conscious enough to enjoy it. At one point I roused myself enough to worry that the horses might be wandering off but when I opened my eyes there was the Old Man, sitting upright with his arms round his knees, watching over them and us. I thought, ‘Well, if you did kill him I hope he deserved it', and let myself drift back to the state where nothing mattered but the murmur of the stream and the willow leaves shifting in a private little breeze that seemed to operate only for them, nowhere else. Or perhaps one other thing mattered – the consciousness of Meredith lying on the bank a few yards away from me, not doing anything, not saying anything, just there.

In mid afternoon, when the sun had shifted westwards and was shining into our grove of trees we drank from the stream, saddled up the horses and went on our way. This second part of the ride was slower. The drowsiness of the midday halt was still clinging to us and the horses, and the temperature must have been well up in the seventies. It was freshened though by the consciousness of the sea being near, though we couldn't see it yet. There was a salt whiff to the air, the occasional gull flying overhead. The land under our hooves changed from the long grass of cattle pastures to cushiony turf with sheep grazing and thickets of golden-flowered gorse instead of trees. In the early evening we came to a line of low sandhills and beyond them the sea, calm and blue as the Mediterranean. We sat in our saddles and watched the white sails of yachts and the cargo steamers going in and out from Maryport to the south and Silloth to the north. Between us and the sea there was nothing but a long sandy beach broken by patches of shingle and small rocks. A small stream, probably the same one we'd dozed by earlier, ran between the sandhills and spread over the beach in a miniature delta of runnels in the sand and tumbled pebbles.