Torn (34 page)

Danny stood in the centre of the small paddock, the Bolivian Indian hat pulled down over his head and ears. In his right hand, clad in a fingerless glove, he held a flat woven rein – like a luggage strap – its length wound back and forth. The other end of this rein was linked to a ring on the Dartmoor pony's wide nose band. Violet, with Sasha gazing down imperiously from her perch astride the saddle, circled him. In his un-gloved hand Danny held a long thin bamboo cane and, like a circus trainer, he touched the tip to the pony's flank from time to time. Rory sat grumpily on a hay bale.

‘I want to ride Violent,' he said, when he spotted her.

Jess smiled at his mispronunciation. ‘But you need a hard hat, like Sasha, to ride Violet.'

Danny glanced round; his nod of recognition was impassive. Though Jess could hardly accuse him of being hostile, there was a definite barrier between them which had to be broken through at every meeting. Her throat unaccountably thickened. She missed the affectionate welcome in his face, missed his smiles and those secret glances charged with desire.

‘Mrs Warwick did buy him one,' Danny said, tipping his head towards an extra helmet on the grass beside the bale. ‘But he hasn't been keen to ride until just now.'

This was typical of Rory. Though attracted to activities with an element of risk, he would frequently lose his nerve when offered the opportunity to take part. Sean had called him a wimp and forced him into doing things he was patently scared of. Instinctively protective of her child's well-being, Jessica had always taken Rory's side, welcoming what she saw as his innate and thoroughly understandable caution. That he avoided the high slide and the big boys' climbing frame, even while giving them lustful glances, had so far made life a lot less stressful.

‘I do want to
now
,' Rory said, underlining his intention by picking up the helmet and cramming it on. Fastening it for him, Jess made a mental note to thank her friend and offer to pay.

‘OK. I'll walk round with you, shall I?' Jessica looked at Danny to check. ‘Is that all right? It wouldn't spook Violet if I walked beside her, to make Rory feel secure?'

‘She'll be fine. She's very good tempered.' As if to demonstrate this, the pony stood placidly, nonchalantly ruminating on her bit, while Danny lifted Sasha down and then lifted a wide-eyed, taut-lipped Rory up into the saddle. His face, as he turned it to her, was pale and agonised, yet he pushed her away when she tried to hook her hand into his waistband at the back of his jeans.

‘No! I want Danny to do it.'

Jessica retreated to the perimeter but exchanged a glance with Danny. It was as if he understood the entreaty in her expression.

‘Don't worry, I'll stay beside him.'

A clump of grass sprouted around the base of the nearest fence post. To Violet it must have looked especially luscious. She bent her head, pitching Rory forward. Equilibrium lost, he let go of the reins and flung his arms out sideways. Jess gasped and leapt forward to save her son. But it was Danny's neck her child's flailing arms lassoed; it was Danny who caught him before he launched himself from the unreliable creature's back. A few moments passed in this awkward embrace, as Jessica's heartbeat returned to normal. She stepped back; her interference was not needed. Rory, still twisted sideways on the saddle, clung to Danny. Danny held him and rubbed his back, at once offering comfort and reassurance while preventing him from slithering down. Oblivious to the urgent muttered debate going on between the riding instructor and the child, Violet lifted her head and stared at her rider's mother. Emerald strands trailed from either side of her mouth.

Gradually, Danny persuaded Rory to let go of his neck and instead to hold the reins. He encouraged him to grip tightly with his knees. Eventually, with the young man walking alongside, boy and horse made a very slow circuit of the small paddock. To Rory's evident relief, Danny lifted him down. Honour had been satisfied. Time enough in the future to attempt the dangerous adventure again.

‘Well done,' Jessica said. ‘I'm proud of you. You're a horse rider now!' As the adrenaline of fear turned to triumph, Rory's cheeks regained their colour. ‘Now, do you think those chickens have laid any more eggs?'

Sasha was blasé, but this everyday miracle was yet to become commonplace to her friend. She couldn't resist the opportunity to impress him yet again. Violet was abandoned as they ran off, helmets still in place. The pony stooped for another mouthful of grass. Danny patted her neck and hitched the lunge rein to the top rail of the fence.

‘Thank you for that. You handled him really well. Better than I could.'

Danny shrugged. It wasn't the first time Jess had witnessed him employing an almost extra-sensory perception in his dealings with animals. Now she discovered he could do the same with children, and their affection for him was obvious. No point in remarking upon it; he was unlikely to admit to any special talent.

‘How are you, Danny?' she asked, after a short pause.

‘Fine.'

‘You are fully fit?'

‘Yeah.' This time there was a hint of impatience.

‘I enjoyed meeting your brother the other day.'

He shook his head. ‘What is he like? I've a job to follow what he says.'

‘Me too. What did you make of Imogen?'

A shrug. ‘Obviously loopy!'

‘Why so?'

‘All that stuff she came out with about me! Woman's got a screw loose.' He was fiddling with the horse's tack, not looking at Jessica

‘So, you wouldn't consider going in for a career in modelling? What are you doing, Danny?'

‘I'm loosening the girth to make her more comfortable,' he patted Violet's flank as he said this. ‘And running up the stirrups so they don't bang against her when I lead her through to the stable and un-tack her. Can you seriously imagine me as a model?'

‘Course I can.'

His expression softened. ‘Then you're as mad as she is,' he said with another shake of his head. The loops of wool on top of his hat did a shimmy.

‘But it's not something I expected you to be interested in.'

‘You're right. I'm not. The superfic'ality of that world doesn't appeal to me. Anyway, I like what I'm doing. I like working with nature, out in the open air, in the countryside.' He waved his arm in an all-encompassing gesture. ‘Just look at that hill! Every day it's different, every hour, every minute the light changes. If I was inside, modelling, or doing an office job, I wouldn't see that.'

It had been a cold day of sunshine and showers. Now, though the dropping sun was still bright, inky dark clouds were rearing up behind Spine Hill. Its sharply raking slope and the Mohican bristle of trees along its ridged top seemed integrally lit; the brilliance of the acid green against the indigo sky was dazzling.

After a pause she said, ‘Your brother's very fond of you.'

‘Is he?'

‘Of course he is.' How to convey the choked back emotion detected in Piers' voice at the brothers' meeting? And she could never tell him of Piers' rambling and maudlin confession, overheard in the early hours following the dinner party. ‘He's generous too. Have you played your MP3?'

‘A bit, but I … I can't download any more music.'

‘I'll do it for you. And I can copy anything from my collection for you. My … Eagles album, if you'd like it?'

He'd continued to look at the hill, lit up against its dark backdrop, but his eyes turned swiftly to her face. Was he reminded, as she was by those songs, of their first afternoon together? He really did have lovely eyes.

‘Danny?' There was no subtle way to do this. ‘Have you ever had your eyes tested?'

‘What?' He frowned.

‘Your eyesight. Have you ever had it tested?'

‘I'm all right.'

‘You should. Everyone should.'

‘Don't need it.'

‘You might think you don't, but –'

‘My eyes are fine.'

‘You don't know that. Nobody knows for sure. Eyes need to be regularly tested.'

‘Why are you going on about it?'

‘It's no big deal. Just make an appointment at the optician.'

‘No.'

‘You're not worried about wearing glasses?'

‘No! Stop fucking going on about it! You're obsessed! I don't need my fucking eyes tested!'

Chapter Twenty-one

There had been some debate over how they would get to Stratford. The choice was between the Land Rover, which had definitely seen better days, or her BMW – and if they went in her car, who would drive. At last it was agreed that in the interests of arriving in a calm, unshaken, and unsoiled condition they would do best to take her car, which she would drive if James would promise not to be a backseat driver.

Plans had expanded from a simple visit to the Royal Shakespeare Theatre; they were now going to make a day of it. It sounded thoroughly delightful. Just a shame she was going with James Warwick. Jess reminded herself that, if they ever had been, Danny and she were no longer an item; the excursion was not one she could envisage sharing with him. He would never have thought of it, could not have afforded it and even without the first two obstacles, probably wouldn't enjoy it. A classic Western at the movies would have been more to his taste – although she now wondered if his professed love of the genre was real, or simply a younger brother's emulation of everything his older brother liked and did.

James directed her to a car park on the far side of the river from the centre of town. The morning was still dry, but it was cool, and grey clouds hung oppressively low. They crossed the Avon on the chain ferry and he led her up to Holy Trinity Church, set on the tree-clad slope above the river. James evidently knew the church and had no need to follow the herd. He stood back as Jessica, amid the mob of American and Japanese tourists swathed in cameras, gazed first at the broken font where Shakespeare was baptised and then at his bust, quill in hand, set in the chancel wall above his gravestone. She dutifully read all the inscriptions and their translations.

‘Oh, wow!' she whispered to him when she regained his side. ‘It makes it more real somehow, yet it was such a long time ago. Amazing that the original font should have survived.'

‘He became rich and well known in his own lifetime. Always helps when it comes to the preservation of the legend.'

‘Legend?' Jess queried. ‘Do you doubt it was Shakespeare who wrote the plays?'

‘For every significant bit of history which hasn't had all its Is dotted and Ts crossed there's room for the conspiracy theorists.'

‘Surely the challenge has always been based on a class thing? Like … only someone from the top drawer of society could possibly have written those plays and sonnets. You can almost hear the doubts. How on earth could the author have been the provincial son of a glove maker?'

‘Someone who not only didn't go to university, but probably dropped out of school as well. Trouble is, there is absolutely no verifiable, extant manuscript evidence in Will's hand which proves his authorship.'

‘So it could have been Bacon or Marlowe?' she suggested.

‘Or Edward de Vere, the Earl of Oxford? It's widely acknowledged these days that for a couple of the plays he collaborated with other authors … Middleton and Fletcher. And the rest were probably not so much written as developed in rehearsal, with a certain amount of improvisation and ad-libbing, then refined during Will's lifetime.'

‘You think he was a Tudor Mike Leigh?' Jess said.

‘Maybe.' James smiled. ‘And then there's the question over forgery.'

‘I've never heard anything about forgery.'

‘In the nineteenth century there was a disgruntled, but clever Shakespeare scholar called John Payne Collier who made a habit of finding critical documents which filled in blanks in the canon. He was unmasked as a forger in 1850 something. Even now there may still be some corrupted texts. Ultimately I believe that William Shakespeare was “William Shakespeare”. The scepticism about his authorship has only arisen in the centuries since. There's no evidence of rumours flying around in Will's lifetime amongst contemporaries like Ben Jonson. If there had been any doubts worth taking seriously, they'd have been expressed at the time by his contemporaries and rivals, wouldn't they?'

‘You've convinced me.'

‘Did you need convincing?'

‘It's not a subject I've ever really studied … apart from at school.' They'd been walking away from the church along the bank of the river in the direction of the theatre. Swans and cygnets, ducks and ducklings swimming in the shallows eyed them hopefully. One of the swans stretched its white muscular body upright from the water and flapped its wings. A fan of droplets sprayed out.

‘They are such stunning creatures.' Jess said. ‘I've heard that they mate for life. If the pen or cob is killed, shot by some bastard with an air rifle or poisoned by discarded fishing weights, the remaining mate remains celibate. Sometimes they pine away, eventually dying of a broken heart.' She was instantly washed with embarrassment at both her flight into sentiment, and her tactlessness. He was the last person to need reminding of the loss of a mate. ‘I'm sorry. What a stupid thing to say!'

James looked down at her quizzically. ‘But true, from my sketchy knowledge of natural history, if a tad … anthropomorphically expressed!'

This made Jess laugh; she pushed her hand through the crook of his arm, impelled by a sudden fondness for the man. He lightly squeezed her hand in return.

‘What about lunch? Do you fancy trying the Dirty Duck, where the RSC actors are said to hang out? Not that I've ever spotted one there.'

Today, as far as they could tell, there were no celebrities. They sat opposite one another in a bay window, both drinking beer and eating bread and cheese.