Sheltering Rain (26 page)

It was not like the pictures, not like the placemats on her grandparents' tables, which depicted a herd of spindle-thin Thoroughbreds and pink-coated men of privilege. It was not like the oil paintings she had viewed on their walls. It wasn't even like the news reports on television, where dreadlocked hunt saboteurs chanted and blew whistles, waging a class war against the minor members of royalty on horseback. It was like a kind of equine picket line, but with dogs and bikes added. And possibly more dirt.

Sabine felt vaguely disappointed; although she still had ambivalent feelings about coming on a hunt, she had persuaded herself that it was important to see something up close before condemning it, and, more pertinently, had secretly looked forward to Thom seeing her not as the baby of the family, milling around in layers of jumpers and Wellington boots, but having to view her afresh, a vision of navy blue and polished leather, the dashing lady rider in her glamorous environment. Albeit a dashing lady rider whose nerves had left her with a frequent desire to go to the loo.

“Here, take your Mars Bars,” said Thom, stuffing a couple of chocolate bars into her hand. “You'll need them later.” He had rammed his hat onto his head, and was trying to control the wheeling Birdie, a young Thoroughbred overexcited by his second trip out on the hunting field. The wind lifted the young horse's tail and flared his nostrils, and he skipped sideways and backward as leaves flicked up to meet him.

“Bloody Liam's been winding them up,” he said, as Joy expressed some concern. “Thought it would be a laugh to start blowing a hunting horn before we'd even loaded them. Now this lad doesn't know whether he's coming or going.”

The effect of a hunting horn on the horses of Kilcarrion had astonished Sabine. Thom had blown one once, several weeks ago, when he had been trying to persuade Sabine that horses actually enjoyed it. The Duke had rushed to his stable door and thrust his huge head over, glancing left and right, and then promptly relieved himself with excitement.

“How do you know it's not just fear making them do that?” Sabine had challenged. “I'd probably come and have a look and poo myself if I was frightened of a noise.”

“You know when these lads are frightened,” said Thom. “They'll lay their ears flat against their heads, and kick out. You'll see the whites of their eyes. You still don't believe me? Okay. If I was to open this door now, Dukey boy would go over and stand by the horse box, ready to go.”

Just to prove a point, he did, and he had.

Sabine had almost laughed out loud at the sight of the old horse, walking determinedly over, and then waiting patiently by the ramp. And, as Thom had given him a Polo mint, and led him slowly back to his stable, she had to admit that even if she didn't like hunting, in this yard of quadrupeds at least, she was in a minority.

Now, as Thom gave her a leg up onto the gray, Sabine found herself feeling sick with nerves. Picking up on the tension, the normally well-behaved horse stamped, and champed at his bit impatiently, his ears flicking backward and forward like gear levers.

“Whatever you do, don't overtake the Master.” A head-scarfed Joy, straightening Sabine's stirrup leathers, was repeating the instructions she had already given her twice on the journey over. “Keep your horse out of the way of the hounds, and don't go barging your way over the jumps. If someone is lined up, then you hold back and wait for them to go. Don't gallop through the middle of fields. And don't wear that little man out,” she said, stroking the horse's nose with a damp hand. “Let him go until he's tired, and then we'll come and meet you with the horse box. I don't want you pushing him till dark, just because you get carried away.”

Sabine, whose stomach was now turning over with fear, thought she was probably the least likely person to get carried away that she could see. Unless they meant in a coffin. Everyone else seemed to be grinning, exchanging greetings, and admiring horses. Was she the only one convinced that she was going to die?

“Don't you worry, Mrs. Ballantyne,” said Thom, swinging his leg over the saddle. “I'll take good care of her.”

“Don't let her get too far to the front of the field, Thom,” Joy said, anxiously. “It's very wet going and there's a bit of a badly behaved crowd going to be up behind the Master.”

Sabine followed her gaze to a group of young men, who, laughing, were tickling one another's horses with their whips, making them shy and buck.

“Idiots,” said Thom, but smiling. “Don't worry, Mrs. Ballantyne. I'll hold back.”

And then, suddenly, with a few blasts on the horn, they were all off, the hundred or so shod hooves clattering along the wet road.

“Smile!” said Thom, grinning down at her. “You'll have a grand time.”

Sabine didn't feel she could tell him what she thought: that she was more likely to kill herself under one of these insane animals' hooves, that she didn't feel able to jump off a curb, let alone over a five-barred gate, and that she felt so nauseous that it was quite likely she was going to have to throw up off the side of her horse.

“I don't want to see anything killed,” she said, her head down against the wind. “I don't want to be anywhere near. And if they try and do that blood thing on my face, I'll probably kill them all. Master or not.”

“I can't hear you,” said Thom, pointing his whip ahead. “C'mon, stay with me. We're headed into that next field.”

From then on, the day seemed to pass by in a kind of blur. As soon as the horses felt the spring of wet turf beneath them, they bolted, racing up the side of the pitted, boggy hill, and Sabine, caught in their midst, found her initial lurch of fear displaced by a sense of mounting excitement, as the various grinning, mud-splattered faces cantered past her. When they had reached the top, Sabine had found that she too was grinning, and forgot to remove it when Thom arrived next to her.

“You okay?” he said, raising his eyebrows.

“Fine,” she said, breathlessly.

“We'll get some color in those cheeks today,” he said, and then they were off again.

The first part of the hunt flashed by at almost breakneck speed; boxed in to the ragtag assortment of horses and riders, Sabine found herself placing her trust in the little gray horse, frequently closing her eyes and clutching hold of his mane as they approached the stiles and hedges that they flew over in a moving population, like liquid. She didn't have time to stay frightened; and, soon, noticing the numbers of tiny children on ponies and reckless estate kids on scruffy skewbalds, she realized there was little that they were going to face that she, on the bigger, braver horse, couldn't, too.

Sabine had no idea where she was headed. Or what she was meant to be doing. Her eyes stung, her mouth was filled with the taste of mud, kicked back by those in front, but she found her heart thumping with excitement, so that she often urged her horse to go faster, trying to make her way farther forward in the field. Thom tried to stick with her as much as possible, but often they would become separated, either when one had to wait to jump into the next field, or simply because the hunt divided, and there would be a period of standing around and blowing of horns until everyone was reunited.

There was an awful lot of standing around in hunting, Sabine discovered. Usually just when you had got used to galloping along. It seemed to take place simply so that people could chat to one another, remarking upon their and their horses' performances, or gossiping about who had disappeared with whom, seemingly ignorant of the fact that the rain pelted down around them, sending channels of water down their waxed jackets and clamping the horses' tails unhappily to their quarters. The fact that Sabine knew no one except Thom did not seem to have excluded her from this: A plump, middle-aged woman had told her she was “doing grand” and remarked that she knew her mother; a very thin man with a beaky nose had told her that he knew her horse; and one of the scruffy children had asked if he could have a bite of her Mars Bar. She had given him the whole thing. But then she had been preoccupied, for it was as they stood around like this that a young girl with long blonde curly hair tied back in a hair net would frequently approach Thom, and chat and laugh, and elegantly wipe the dirt from her nose, or, smiling, ask him to do it for her. She fancied him; it was
so
obvious. She was practically gagging for him. But when Sabine said this to Thom as they waited for one of the older men to climb back aboard his recently vacated saddle, he looked blank, and shook his head as if he hadn't even noticed.

Annoyingly, he seemed determined to baby her today, too. Twice he jumped off, and said he wanted to check her horse's girth, thrusting her leg and the saddle flap out of the way as he heaved the buckles up a further notch. But it wasn't done with any flirting, or unnecessary touching of her thigh, and when Sabine had rather recklessly tried to wipe the mud from his white hunting stock, he had laughed, and wheeled his horse away, in order to do it himself.

“You worry about yourself, now,” he said, tapping inexplicably at his head. “There's a lot worse that can happen out here than a bit of mud on your gear.”

T
hey had been out almost three hours when Sabine realized she hadn't actually seen a fox. She was ashamed to think that she had completely forgotten that chasing and killing one had been the aim of the day, but then she was no longer anywhere near the hounds, and her horse, along with three or four others, had somehow taken a different turning from the main body of the hunt, and were all walking in a sedate manner, “giving the horses a breather,” as the ruddy-faced farmer at the front put it.

Sabine had lost Thom in a forest, when he had dismounted to help one of the horses, who had gotten a leg caught in barbed wire. There were four people standing around the animal, one of whom had produced wirecutters from his jacket, and Thom had held the stricken horse's head while the delicate operation to free him took place. “You go on,” he had called to Sabine. “We may be a while here. I'll catch you up.” He had apparently stopped worrying about her, a misplaced emotion, as it turned out, as some ten minutes later, the gray had skidded on a timber table and she had pitched over his head.

“Are you all right?” said one of the younger men, who had immediately jumped down to help her, while someone else caught the horse.

“I'm fine,” she said, heaving herself up from the squelching earth. “Just a bit muddy.”

That was an understatement, she realized, a little sorrowfully. Her creamy white jodhpurs were now brown over one leg, like a cut-price jester, while Joy's beautiful navy jacket was plastered in mud.

The man pulled a rather grubby handkerchief from his pocket and handed it to her. “For your face,” he said. “There's a fair bit around your eye.”

When she raised it to the wrong eye, he initially corrected her, then, taking it from her, wiped at her face himself. It was at this point that she noticed him: brown eyes, pale skin, a broad smile. Young.

“You're not from here, then,” he said, helping her over to the gray horse, who had been checked over and found sound. “Not with that accent. London, is it?”

“Yup.” It sounded too bald. “I'm staying with my grandparents.”

“Where?”

“Kilcarrion. It's in a village called Ballymalnaugh.”

“I know it. Who are your folks?”

“They're called Ballantyne.”

He reached down for her boot, offering to give her a leg up.

“I know them. The old couple. English. Didn't realize they had any rellies.”

She looked down at him, grinning.

“Oh. And you know everyone's business, do you?”

He grinned back. He was quite good-looking, really.

“Listen, London girl. Round here, everybody knows everyone's business.”

He had stuck with her after that, chatting, and now, as they walked in their little group down the wet lanes, he was still chatting. He lived in a village about four miles away from hers, was hoping to go to Durham University in England, like his brother, and spent his spare time “mucking around” on his parents' farm. He called himself Robert, everyone else called him Bobby, and Sabine didn't think she had ever met anyone who talked quite as much.

“So, d'you go out much, Sabine?”

“What, in London?”

“No, here. I'm sure a pretty girl like yourself has no shortage of offers in London.”

Sabine narrowed her eyes at him. Bobby had a way of saying charming things that hinted just gently that he was also taking the mickey. Sabine was very conscious of the possibility that people were taking the mickey.

“I go out a bit,” she said.

“The pub and stuff?” he said, pulling his horse back slightly so that they were alongside each other.

“Stuff like that,” she said, a little disingenuously. Sabine had not been to a pub since she had gotten there. Her grandparents were not really pub people, and Thom had never shown the slightest inclination to invite her.

“You want to go out sometime?”

Sabine flushed. He was asking her out! She stared at her hands, berating herself for the flood of color to her face. God, she could be uncool sometimes.

“If you want,” she muttered.

“Well you don't have to,” he said. “I won't twist your arm or anything.” He was still grinning.

Sabine smiled back. She could make up her mind how she felt about him when she got home. And how on earth she would explain any potential date to her grandparents.

“Okay, then.”

“Good. Now, hold on tight, I think we're going to take the shortcut back to the others.”

Before she had had a chance to reflect upon Bobby McAndrew, Sabine found herself galloping across a field, close on the heels of his bay horse. It was just beginning to get dark, and as they raced toward the far end, Sabine realized she had begun to ache all over and could no longer feel her toes. Her eyes focused on the mud-spattered hindquarters in front of her, she felt a sudden longing for a long, hot bath, and hoped that they weren't too far from home. She had no idea where she was going to meet Thom, and if she couldn't find him, she didn't know where she was meant to meet her grandmother. She hadn't really been listening this morning.