The Other Half of My Heart (7 page)

Most of the staff at the yard live in. Tina, who lives at home and walks to work, is something of an outsider because she isn't sleeping and eating at work too, but she doesn't mind. She suspects that even if she was sharing one of the bedrooms in the old stables, she would still be an outsider to the likes of Stella-known-as-Ells, Theresa-known-as-Tippy and Fiona-known-as-Fudge, who are kind and welcoming enough, but grew up with their own ponies and wear jodhpurs every day while Tina has to save hers for her riding lessons. They are older, too, old enough to live easily away from home and smell faintly of cigarettes and talk about sex in a matter-of-fact way that makes Tina turn away to hide her pinking face. Bettina-known-as-Tina is the wrong way round, an odd name made into a commonplace one, but that seems to suit.

And anyway, Tina isn't there to make friends. She has Katrina, who had all the same lessons as her at school and lives two doors down, and she has her twin, who gives a daily tug to her unruly ponytail or points out her freckles or spots to remind her that she is half of a strong, solid unit, and that is all she really needs. Tina is at the Flood stables for the times when she is first into the stalls in the morning, when the horses will look at her as she rakes her eyes up and down them, and she is amazed and delighted once more by the smell and the sheen and the gentle noises of greeting. Tina soon develops what she thinks of as her ‘practical voice' – ‘Morning, Blaze,' she calls cheerfully to the horse as she latches a door behind her, in the way that she hears the others do – but she still takes a few seconds to gaze and admire, a starstruck fan meeting her hero at the stage door.

Most of the horses will have been woken by the morning hubbub of the yard, and so a heavy head swings towards her as she unlatches the lower door and goes in. She will go straight to the horse's head and rub her palm down the long flat face, curl it under the muzzle where hair tickles her hands. The horse's lips, softer than they look, will move across her palm on the off-chance of a treat. Tina runs her hands over the horse's neck, over withers and back, feeling the warmth and the smoothness and the easy strength as the animal shifts its weight or starts to move. She's checking for anything unusual, any strange tensions or signs of sickness or damage. If she doesn't find any, she'll give the horse its feed and leave it to breakfast in peace. She'll be back later, for mucking-out and grooming and doing whatever preparation is needed for the horse that day, leading it out to the paddock if it isn't going to be ridden in the morning. But the first moment is the best part of Tina's day, better even than the feeling of an easy canter on an animal that she knows she is lucky to be exercising, or good news about the stables' latest success. She holds this morning pleasure as a guilty secret, although it becomes less guilty after her ride out with Fred.

Whenever any member of staff is going to start riding his horses, Fred invites them to come for a hack with him. They can choose their mount. Tina chooses Snowdrop, one of the Floods' younger horses, a chestnut Dutch warmblood with a sweet, calm nature and a phenomenal jumping ability that he rarely displays when away from Flood Farm. He doesn't seem to like competition, which is a great source of frustration to Fred, but rather endears him to Tina.

‘I can tell a lot from the horse someone chooses,' Fred says. ‘You're not trying to impress me, because you didn't bring Bob. You don't care about status, because you didn't ask for Foxglove.'

Tina is feeling quite pleased with herself, until ‘Snowdrop is a lovely animal, but he won't do anything spectacular. With the right handling, though, he'll do well enough.'

Fair enough, Tina thinks. That's me. Steady. But she knows that she is happy. Steady people don't have spectacular successes, but they don't have spectacular falls either. She's come off once or twice and often thought of the visceral fear of the seconds between broad, warm back and broader, colder earth: she is amazed at how the others laugh and bounce up after their falls, while she is left cold and shaken by hers.

‘I often think, you know, Tina, that we have it all wrong with horses,' Fred continues. ‘We talk about breaking them, and training them, and working them, and racing them. But everything we do, we do only because we have their permission and we have earned their respect. Look at these animals. They are a thousand times stronger than us, more capable, more beautiful. So, Tina, while you are here, I hope you will do one thing for me.'

They pause at the top of one of the hills that loom over Missingham. It is early, still, and there are some fingertips of darkness clinging on to the western horizon. She and Fred loosen their reins. He is riding Bea, his grey Arab mare, too old for competing now but his favourite. The two horses crop the grass.

‘Of course,' Tina says. She is only just able to stop herself from saying ‘anything', but that's what she means.

‘Will you remember that it is my wish that you will always ask my horses to do what you want them to do? That you will ride them with respect for their greater power? That you will request, and not compel?'

‘Of course,' Tina says again. Below them, the world seems silent. Their breath is clouding silver in the air.

‘Thank you,' Fred says, tipping the edge of his hat to her with his leather-gloved hand. Dismounting in the yard, she feels disorientated to be back in everyday life, and not just because Fred has led the way back down at a pace that Tina would have thought reckless had she not both survived and enjoyed it. Fudge touches her elbow, and says, did you get the request not compel speech?

Yes, Tina says, yes I did. She braces herself for a joke, but Fudge just gives her arm a squeeze and says, good, isn't it?

Yes, Tina says again.

And she feels as though something momentous has happened: more momentous than, later, losing her virginity or fracturing her collarbone flying over Snowdrop's head when he refuses a jump. Perhaps it's that she's arrived at her place in the world, and found the future that fits. Whatever it is, it's palpable; she can feel her eyes shining, sense a new bounce in the balls of her feet as she walks across the yard. She thinks nothing could be better. And it isn't, at least until the afternoon when she and Roddy work on Foxglove together.

On the evening of her ride with Fred, Tina has another go at explaining to her family why she loves horses, and loves to ride. There don't seem to be words for how it is to get up on Snowdrop and feel every muscle primed and ready to roar into smooth action. She tries to articulate the way that he had seemed to pay attention to every move of Tina's, inside and out; whether it was a twitch of a finger or an extra beat of her heart, Snowdrop sensed it, and reacted to it. Riding him is, she says in a sort of despair as she looks around the dinner table at her family's blank-but-encouraging faces, the best thing that has ever happened to her.

‘Wait until you meet the right boy,' her mother says with a twinkle, and her father tuts and shakes his head at his wife.

‘Let her have her career before you have her settle down,' he says.

‘Haven't you been paying attention, darling? It's the 1990s. She can have both.' Alice pokes Howard in the arm. Tina and Sam roll their eyes at each other.

She tells them what Fred had said to her, with some trepidation; she doesn't want to be misunderstood. They listen, and they nod, and they don't say a lot but Sam squeezes her hand under the table.

So the Randolph household is calm and settled, although it bobs a little in the waves when Sam starts university and Howard, Alice and Tina have to learn to be a trio. Sam seems as happy there as Tina is at the stables, and that makes it easier for them all to adapt. ‘It's great here,' he enthuses to Tina in one of his rare emails, sent from the university library and read at the computer in the corner of the living room. ‘I'm not very bright any more, I'm pretty average, and so I can get on with my life. At Oxford, I'm you!'

And it seemed that he was good at being at Oxford, his friendliness and social ease making up for the gap between his background and that of many of his peers there, the opposite of Tina's experience at work. But Tina had her horses, so she didn't mind about the people so much.

And then comes Roddy Flood. And she finds that she really, really minds about him. Of course, the son of Fred and Fran has always been part of stable life. But when he pulls her into his orbit, nothing is the same, ever again.

Roddy is the closest thing Missingham has to a rock star. He's tipped for the 2000 Olympic showjumping squad, and when he's riding, he is immaculate, polished and pressed and clean-shaven. When he's working in the yard, he wears old jeans and boots and T-shirts like the rest of them, but he somehow wears them better. If he goes out, it will be in much smarter, much tighter jeans, cowboy boots with pointed toes and a silver band around the top of the heel, a white shirt with silver tips on the collar, and a bootlace tie with a horse's head that fastens it. Next to the other young men in the Green Dragon, all in loose pastel shirts and low-slung jeans, he looks smarter, and sleeker. And one hell of a lot sexier. But if Roddy notices the effect he has on women, he doesn't show it.

Everyone at the stables admires Roddy, according to their lights. Some of them lust after him. Some envy his untroubled grace on horseback, some his fearless assaults on any jump, and his ability to make any horse fearless with him. The family dogs follow him, one Labrador nose to each knee. His memory is legendary; he knows the genealogy of every horse in the yard. (‘Would you know if he was making it up?' Sam asks one evening, obviously bored with Tina's non-stop stable yard talk. ‘Of course I would,' Tina replies, and their mother tells Sam not to tease her and Tina blushes.) Those who are immune to his good looks and way with horses long for a ride in his car, a Sierra RS Cosworth that, apparently, is quite something, although to Tina a car is a car and that means travel sickness and not a lot else, whether or not it has a spoiler on the back.

What Tina has always liked best about Roddy is the way that, when he is with a horse, he ignores everything else. While the rest of the staff, mucking-out or grooming in pairs, gossip and laugh, Roddy just focuses. Tina notices, and copies, and her understanding of these animals that have absorbed her all her life grows.

Of course, because away from the horses Roddy is easy company, generous and funny and full of stories, his quiet concentration on his horses becomes a part of his legend. Tina, who has never got the knack of being in a group, although she can talk very happily to one or two people she knows well, finds that her emulation of Roddy just adds to her outsider status. But, as she reminds herself on the walks to and from work, she is in it for the horses. And she intends to be a yard manager one day, which she knows will be another isolated position, if Charlie, who manages the yard for the Floods now, is anything to go by.

‘Give me a hand, will you,' Roddy calls across the stable yard sometimes, and everyone holds their breath to see if theirs is the name he will call. The first time he calls Tina, Fudge has to prompt her, because although it had sounded as though he was asking for her, she didn't see how he really could be. She feels invisible among the louder, more confident girls. Although Roddy is on speaking terms with everyone, Tina doesn't compete for his attention the way that the others do. She doesn't think she crosses his mind, unless she happens to be standing in front of him. But he has called her name.

‘I need to give Foxglove a spring clean,' he says, ‘and you always do such a good job.' Tina blushes at the thought of being noticed for her work, but she isn't really sure what to say. Roddy is looking at her and she realizes that he's waiting for assent. His closeness makes her world warp a little, at the edges.

She nods and smiles. ‘Of course,' she says.

‘Good,' he says, and smiles back. It feels as though he forgets to look away, or perhaps that's her imagination. They set to work. Roddy's favourite mount is a chestnut thoroughbred who is quick to respond and fast over jumps. First Roddy checks his hooves over. The horse lifts his feet automatically when Roddy runs his hand from knee to pastern. Once all four hooves are picked clean, Tina and Roddy take a curry comb each and start rubbing circles from the top of Foxglove's neck to his chest, shoulders, back, belly, rump and finally haunches. To begin with, Tina slows if she starts to get ahead; she doesn't want Roddy to think her too casual. But they soon find a rhythm that matches, and by the time Foxglove is groomed with the stiff brush, then the soft, they are working as a single unit, tick and tock. Sometimes they catch each other's eyes and smile. They talk about nothing except the work in hand, a murmur here and a ‘could you pass' there.

Foxglove is a handsome horse. As Tina works she admires the slope of his shoulders, the length of his neck, and the white markings on his lower legs that Fred calls his go-faster stripes. He is almost always the fastest round a course, but in his haste he can be careless. Roddy is keen that he does better this season, and is spending a lot of time with him.

The horse is wiped down with a cloth, and his eyes and nostrils cleaned, then Roddy takes the mane while Tina takes the tail. As she rakes her fingers through it to separate the tangles before she begins brushing, she catches Roddy looking at her again, but there doesn't seem to be a reason for it: he doesn't offer advice, or say anything, he just looks until she looks away.

‘Foxglove likes you,' he says to her, quietly, as they come out of the loose box, eyes stinging in the bright February sunshine. Ells and Fudge, who have been standing outside, murmur to each other and giggle as they walk off.

‘I like him,' Tina replies. Roddy nods, as though she's just confirmed something important, and then he's off through the stable yard, joking and chatting, and Tina is wondering what just happened, because it felt like more than just grooming a horse. That is as much of a conversation as they have, but it's enough.