Swimming with Horses

by Oakland Ross

  We cantered on across the hill’s narrow brow, rounded the crest at an easy pace, and followed a trail of mown grass to the left. I turned Della toward a gap in a windbreak of maple trees, blocked by a tall earthen mound crowned by a pair of split rails.

  Della seemed to crouch slightly, and then arched into the air, flying over the earthen wall and the rails. She bobbled slightly on the landing but quickly recovered herself, and we headed toward the finish, through a meadow choked with Queen Anne’s lace, aiming for an opening to the left of a large black barn. I glanced at the watch again and urged Della on. I wanted to hit the time exactly right, so I readjusted her pace every three or four strides — a bit faster, a touch slower — until we cantered across the finish line.

  Clear.

  THIRTY-TWO

  Hilary

  South Africa, Winter 1962

  IT WAS A SUNDAY, the stable hands’ day off, and Hilary was nearly ready. She had been up late the previous night, stuffing a pair of saddlebags with gear they would need. Earlier that morning she’d hidden the satchels among a stack of straw bales in the stable loft. Now she was pulling on the warmest clothes she possessed, wondering how cold it might turn in the Drakensberg. She hoped that she had made sufficient preparation, but how could she possibly be sure? Anyway, it was too late to fuss about it now. Done. She hurried out of her bedroom and clattered down the stairs.

  “Howzit, Pretty?” she said to Pretty, the maid. “Hey, Mummy.” She gave her mother a peck on the cheek and snatched an apple from the bowl. She bit through the skin and into the flesh. “I’m off.”

  “Off where?”

  “Don’t know. Just off. For a ride. A long one.”

  “You’ve had no lunch, darling. You’ve got to eat.”

  “No worries. I’ll have something extra for dins.”

  “That’s ridiculous, dar—”

  “Mummy. I need some money.”

  “Not you, surely. For what?”

  “Things. I don’t know. Just, you know, things. At school.”

  “But you’re not at school.”

  “I soon will be. Mummy. Please.”

  “What …? You want it now?”

  “If you’ve got any.”

  “How much do you need?”

  Hilary pretended to conduct an elaborate calculation in her mind. In fact, she’d worked it out beforehand — one figure for what she wanted and another for what she thought she might actually acquire. She’d start at the top and work down. “A thousand,” she said.

  “A thousand …!”

  “Yes, Mummy. Please, please.”

  “Rand …?”

  “Yes, rand. What else?”

  “Dear God. You can’t be serious.”

  “It’s to last all term. The other girls all have pots of money. I feel like a pauper, hey. You can’t imagine what it’s like.”

  “Well, I don’t know …”

  “Please.”

  In the end, it was the pleases that did it. Her mother said she thought she could manage eight hundred. She trudged upstairs to find her bag. Hilary watched as Pretty shuffled through the dining room, dusting things. A scarlet-leaved poinsettia rested on the sideboard, and she grimaced at the sight, shut her eyes. Bloody Jack Tanner. It was a gift he’d sent, addressed to her, with a card that bore his signature, a clumsy scrawl, and the word Welcome, nothing more. She’d have turfed the plant at once if she’d had her way. It damned well gave her the creeps. But her mother had crowed at the sight of it. “How thoughtful! It will look lovely here.” And so, here it was. Hilary had to look away.

  She returned her attention to Pretty, still absorbed in her labours, dusting, straightening. She felt as if she’d been watching the woman go about these same duties all her life, mainly because she had. Pretty had been working for the Anson family since before Hilary was born.

  Now Pretty hesitated. She turned to face Hilary. “You be careful, Miss Anson.”

  “I’m sorry …? Pretty …?”

  “It’s cold this time of year in the mountains. Deadly cold. And you don’t know the way.”

  Hilary’s throat felt suddenly dry. She struggled to swallow. Pretty knew …?

  Later, in the barn, after she’d got the money from her mother and after she’d promised to be back for dinner, cross her heart, she kicked herself for not having anticipated this. Of course, Pretty knew. The bush telegraph, they called it. It had its own ways and means. Probably no one could understand the true workings of it. But word got out and, one way or another, news got around. You had to be so damned careful. Muletsi had told her that.

  Well, it was done now, and there was nothing for it but to saddle two horses. She’d have liked to take South Wind but wondered whether that would be entirely wise. Absconding with her father’s most valuable horse? It seemed excessive, even to her, the mistress of extreme. On the other hand, no other beast in the stable had either the legs or the stamina that South Wind possessed in spades. She would need all the horse she could muster, so she reversed herself on the spot. In for a penny, in for a pound. With luck, all would work out well, and her father would have his horse back in the end, none the worse for wear. South Wind it was. For Muletsi, she had already decided on a spare horse named Welshman, a large, sturdy creature that’d be able to support Muletsi’s size and weight. He was a poky, deliberate beast, but he was honest and strong.

  She stood by the grain bins for several moments, brooding. She was having second thoughts, the last thing she could afford. More than anything else, she worried about the cold. Almost every year people perished in the blizzards that raged up in the Drakensberg — herd boys mostly, young lads charged with keeping watch over flocks of sheep or goats or small herds of bony cattle. They bloody well froze to death. Beyond that, she was feeling guilty about her parents. They were going to suffer paroxysms of worry.

  But there was no way around that, none that she could see, so she got to work, saddling both horses and latching the saddlebags in place. She had just cinched Southey’s girth when she had another thought. Magnificent beast though he was, he had a maniac tendency to throw his head. She’d taken more than one hard knock square on the nose thanks to a backward toss of Southey’s head and his giraffe-like ability to contort his neck. She decided to fetch an extra piece of tack — a standing martingale — guaranteed to keep his frigging noggin more or less where it belonged. She ran the leather collar over Southey’s head before unhitching his girth, feeding it through the martingale’s lower loop, and cinching it again. That done, she joined the upper loop of the martingale to the backside of his noseband. There. Normally, she hated using any more artificial aids than were absolutely necessary, but Southey was uncommonly strong, and his will was fierce. Given time, she would have sorted this head-tossing business of his and without the benefit of so restrictive a device. But time, she had not. Now she gave him a swat on the neck. “There you go, my beauty.”

  Once both horses were tacked up and ready, she led the pair of them clopping along the corridor and then out to the mounting station in the courtyard in front of the stable. She had Welshman on a braided leather shank and South Wind by the reins. She climbed onto the mounting block and swung herself onto Southey’s back, straightened herself in the saddle.

  Once she’d got both horses organized, she urged South Wind forward, and they set off at a trot, Welshman tagging along on the shank — just a girl and a pair of horses making their way down a paved road past a span of poplars. To the right, the land plunged sharply away into the Mooi River valley, clad in the dull winter colours of Natal, all browns and muddy greens. Grey clouds rafted overhead. She took a deep breath, slowly filled her lungs. Just as slowly, she let the air back out.

  Immediately, it began to rain, which was a curse — an insult from some rude god. Winter is supposed to be the dry season in Natal. What in the name of heaven was going on? She hiked up her collar and let the rain fall.

  By the time she rode into Bruntville, it wasn’t just ra
ining. It was thudding down. In torrents. Already, she was frigging well drenched — drenched and damned near freezing. This was a magnificent start. She dismounted in a small open space among the shanties and peered around, looking for some place that was dry. There wasn’t much on offer. In the end, she huddled in the shelter of a slender overhang of corrugated zinc — the best cover she could find. Some boys were moping about in the mud, just as soaking wet as she was herself, with no more than short pants and torn jerseys as protection against the chill. She called to them, and they hurried over as if attached to her by an elastic band.

  “Howzit?” she said.

  “Very fine, Miss,” said one.

  “Topping,” said another.

  God knew where he’d picked that up.

  She asked if they were acquainted with Mr. Ndlovu, and they nodded. All the while, they bounced from bare foot to bare foot, their arms clutched around their slender, shivering torsos, their teeth chattering in the uncustomary cold.

  “Good,” she said. “I want you to find him for me. Tell him Miss Anson is here. Have you got that? Miss Anson.”

  “Miss Anson,” repeated one, the one who’d spoken first. “Miss Anson is here. Miss Anson is you?”

  She said that it was.

  Off they went, scampering through the rain and the mud. She waited, gazing around herself at the cinder-block dwellings with their tin chimneys, now sputtering filaments of grey smoke into the winter air. They were poor, these people. That was for bloody sure. But they were trying. You could tell as much at a glance. Most of the little houses had small, hand-fashioned flower boxes arrayed outside. The boxes were drenched now, of course, and the flowers bedraggled. But there they were, just the same.

  She glanced down at her watch. Three o’clock. She wondered whether it made any sense to set out right away, now, today. Wouldn’t it be better to wait till tomorrow? Get a fresh start? She decided she’d leave that to Muletsi. He would know much better than she how far they could expect to travel in a given time and where they might spend the night.

  Just now all she had to do was wait. She regarded the horses, who silently peered back at her, as if posing questions without words. Why are we here? Why are you doing this to us? Why are we not someplace warm, in a barn somewhere, enjoying a hot bran mash? They brooded, eyeing her, not blaming her exactly, but not letting her off the hook, either.

  “Ag, South Wind,” she whispered. “Ag, Welshman. You poor beasts. We’ll soon get you dry. I promise.”

  “Hilary …”

  She started and looked off to her right, toward the sound of Muletsi’s voice.

  He ducked under Welshman’s head and stood before her — Muletsi Dadla in the flesh. Except for that one time on the soccer pitch, it had been months since she’d seen him.

  “You’re soaking,” he said. “Come. We’ll put the horses away. We need to talk.”

  And it was true. They did need to talk — and they needed to do a lot more besides. They needed to figure this whole thing out.

  THIRTY-THREE

  Sam

  Ontario, Summer 1963

  AFTER THE CROSS-COUNTRY event, the stadium-jumping competition was almost an anticlimax. Della and I went clear, as did Edwin Duval and Janet Hünigan, not to mention several riders from other clubs. But my edge in the dressage made the difference. I finished in first place overall, and they gave me a large red rosette and a silver tray.

  “Not real silver,” I said. “Silver-plated.”

  This was later, when Hilary and I were tending to our horses beside Colonel Barker’s trailer, preparing for the long drive home. Hilary had a champion’s trophy, too, a platter that was even grander-looking than mine. As usual, she had easily won her division.

  Soon Colonel Barker tottered over, issuing congratulations of his own. He was slurring his words a little, so it was clear he had been drinking. He announced he would not be driving us directly back to Kelso. Instead, we would be paying a visit to an acquaintance of his, an investor of some kind who had invited some people to drop by for drinks and whatnot.

  “Won’t take more than a tick,” he said.

  Neither Hilary nor I had any desire to make a detour to a cocktail party, not at this late hour on this long and happy day, but we were not in charge. We loaded the horses into the trailer and packed our gear into the trunk and back seat. Now we had to face a more delicate matter — the colonel’s obviously inebriated condition.

  “Egad!” he said.

  He climbed behind the wheel and turned to look at Hilary, who had settled herself on the passenger side, bridling with displeasure.

  “What …?” he said.

  “I didn’t say anything.”

  “Don’t need to. It’s that look.”

  “Just drive carefully, then. Slowly. The horses.”

  “I’m aware of the horses.”

  “All right, then.”

  Colonel Barker started the engine and eased the car across the undulating meadow, weaving past the other vehicles and trailers, past the riders on foot and the blanketed horses. He switched on the right-hand turn signal and drove out onto the paved road that ran alongside the fairgrounds. The car lurched from side to side as the horse trailer rocked on its tires, but it seemed that Colonel Barker had matters under control.

  Hunched in the back, I stared at my trophy, silently reading out the names of past winners. Soon my own name and Della’s would appear alongside the rest. I’d be immortal; we both would. Colonel Barker crept through the town, his brow furrowed in concentration. He made only one or two wrong turns along the way, and eventually we pulled up in front of a mock-Tudor mansion, surrounded by similarly large houses, all set on rambling green properties.

  Hilary whistled. “An ‘acquaintance,’ you say.”

  Colonel Barker straightened his eye patch. “You may have heard of him. Name’s Quinton Vasco …”

  Silence. Complete and utter silence. Quinton Vasco …?

  Looking back on those few moments now — the three of us seated in Colonel Barker’s car, parked outside what I then realized was Quinton Vasco’s house — I recall a plummeting sensation, a kind of vertigo, as if I were aware even then of all that would soon follow, although I could have had no idea. But there we were, suddenly immersed in what I later took to be an irresistible tide of unfolding events. This was the moment when Hilary Anson would meet Quinton Vasco for what I then believed to be the first time. In that moment, the encounter seemed a matter of purest chance and, in a way, it was. But now, all these years later, I’m convinced that this meeting, or one like it, would have taken place no matter what, if not on this day then on another, if not at this place then somewhere else. Nothing important would have changed. Everything would have happened more or less as it did. One way or another, Quinton Vasco would soon be dead, his corpse abandoned in a large field of alfalfa grass, a couple of hundred yards north of Number Four Sideroad in Kelso County. It sometimes seems to me now — as I look back on that moment, our arrival at Quinton Vasco’s mansion — that I was even then able to foresee everything that would later take place. But that’s an illusion, a trick of time and memory. Of course I didn’t know; I couldn’t have known. I merely eased my silver tray aside, as the colonel climbed out of the car, still a little unsteady on his feet. He asked if we would like to accompany him to the party.

  Hilary shrugged. “Why not?” She turned to look back at me. I saw nothing unusual in her gaze. “This should be interesting.”

  And it was. It surely was.

  The interior of Quinton Vasco’s house swelled with guests, and the air was practically blue from cigarette smoke. Men and women in dark pinstriped servants’ uniforms shuttled through the living room or out onto the terrace, bearing platters of canapés or trays of drinks. Colonel Barker immediately took a first libation and then a second.

  “Colonel …!” A man approached. He was short of stature, slim of build, and looked to be about thirty-five, which seemed pretty old to me but not q
uite ancient. He had a square face with brush-cut hair, and he wore thick-framed eyeglasses. I especially remember that he was dressed all in black — black shoes, black trousers, and a black turtleneck sweater.

  This, it turned out, was Quinton Vasco. He didn’t look anything like the man I had imagined. I had envisioned an overweight oaf, thickly bearded, with dark, searching eyes and cavernous features — a stereotypical villain, straight from central casting. But this clean-cut and possibly somewhat glib individual was nothing of the kind. He clapped Colonel Barker on the back and then thrust his right hand toward me.

  “Quint Vasco,” he said.

  He spoke in a somewhat high-pitched, slightly aspirated voice with what I took to be an English intonation, although it was very different from Colonel Barker’s pretend accent.

  “Liverpudlian,” he said, sensing my confusion. “From Liverpool. Home of the Beatles. You ever hear of them?”

  I shook my head. The British musical invasion of the early 1960s was still a way’s off, and few people in Canada had heard of the Beatles yet.

  “Don’t worry,” he said. “You will.”

  I nodded, but I didn’t reply, not at first. I was too busy thinking about Quinton Vasco, his physical presence, nothing else. I couldn’t believe I was standing in front of him, talking to him, actually taking up space inside his house.

  Quinton frigging Vasco.

  I said my name was Sam Mitchell. He nodded and looked at me for a time, in a way I didn’t like. Then he turned to Hilary, who was at least a couple of inches taller than he.

  “And you are …?”

  She told him her name, pronouncing the words with care, as if it were important for Quinton Vasco to get them right.