by Nicola Upson
The beach was more crowded now, and it seemed to him that the whole of the estate had come out to enjoy itself. He watched as couples and young families walked around the fair, relaxed and happy to be together, and he was suddenly overwhelmed with sorrow that he would never see either of his children in love and married. He had given his baby up after the accident, before they could come and force him to do it. He knew that he wasn’t capable of looking after a child, but didn’t want to give anyone else the satisfaction of making his decision for him, so he walked to the Union the day after his daughter’s funeral and handed the baby over at the gate, trying not to notice the pity in the woman’s eyes. He went straight across the road to the nearest bar and drank as much as he could pay for, determined to prove to himself that he was unfit to be a father, and to resist the temptation to run back to those gates and say it had all been a mistake. It was a Friday, and the bar was packed with people by six o’clock. A group of young fishermen had been there, surrounded as usual by women. As he watched them, Joseph felt his father’s resentment coming back to him like an unwanted legacy. If his wife hadn’t left him, if there weren’t men like that in the world, handsome young men to whom words and charm came easily, his life would have followed that well-worn path, uneventful but content. He had hated them then, and he hated them still for turning him into the man he had never wanted to be.
Voices were raised in song around the bonfire now, rowdy but good-natured, and it reminded him of a different life. It was the same comfortable sound that accompanied his going to sleep on Friday and Saturday nights, when the men from the estate passed his house singing on their way home from a night out in Helston after a hard-working week. Some held the notes as steadily as they held their drink, others were worse for wear and broke the melody, but the voices and laughter sounded sweet in the road outside, mingling with his drowsiness and the warmth of his wife’s body next to him, with the security of four walls and the promise of a life to come. He closed his eyes, weakened by this persistent nostalgia for memories that were not truthfully his. When he opened them again, he saw Loveday looking at him curiously and her very presence seemed to taunt him. Fire had not been able to tear her family apart. What made them so much stronger than him? He threw his glass down on to the sand and turned towards the coastal path that led to the village. He needed something stronger than cider. It was harder these days to forget.
The soft sea wind stirred the leaves of the ancient oaks and sycamores as Josephine and Archie wandered back through the woods to Loe House. ‘There’s something about a fair,’ she said, stopping to admire a pair of swans as they flew low over the evening lake. ‘All those miserable months I spent in Nottingham were worth it just for that one week when the Goose Fair arrived.’
Archie smiled at her. ‘I’m not sure we can compete with that, but I’m glad you had a good time.’
‘Don’t put yourself down – you’ve got the sea on your side.’ They rounded a bend in the track, and the Lodge came into view on the opposite side of the water, grey and solitary in the waking starlight. ‘And the company’s better, of course,’ she added, taking his arm, ‘even if it is a bit quiet. I hope you’re not still smarting over that run-out.’
‘Don’t even mention it,’ he said through gritted teeth. ‘Sometimes I wonder which side Lettice is on – she took nearly as many of our wickets as they did.’
‘Yes, but you can’t knock a hundred and three not out. And I don’t think the name “Slogger” really does her justice – there was a lot of finesse in some of those boundaries. Anyway, you certainly wouldn’t have won without her.’
‘No, you’re right, as much as I hate to admit it. But that’s not why I’m quiet. To be honest, I was just enjoying the peace – it’s been a strange couple of days, and I think I might have got caught up in things which are really none of my business.’ He told her about his conversation with Jago, and the promise he had made to look into Christopher’s disappearance.
‘That doesn’t sound like much of a holiday to me.’
‘I know, but what can I do? They’re my friends.’
‘And you feel guilty for never being here, so you think this might make up for it.’
‘Something like that. Next time we want some time together by the sea, remind me to book a weekend in Brighton.’ She raised an eyebrow. ‘Sorry, you’ve got your reputation to think of. What would the good people of Inverness say if they opened their Tatler over breakfast and saw you letting your hair down on the pier with Scotland Yard?’
‘I think they’d be sorely disappointed. It’s nowhere near as exotic as some of the things they imagine I get up to.’ They reached a fork in the road, and took the path that led past the stable block and through the walled gardens to Loe House. ‘So what are you going to do about Christopher?’ she asked.
‘Well, I can’t do much tomorrow because of this wretched play but, if he hasn’t shown up by Wednesday, I’ll have a word with the local station here and ask around a bit on the estate, then put a call in to Bill just in case he’s gone further afield. Apart from that, I don’t really see what I can do. You might have another word with Loveday for me, though – she’s the last person to have seen him as far as we know.’
‘Of course, but if you don’t mind, I’ll leave her sister to you.’
‘It’s a deal.’ The gentle, contented sound of a horse came from the stable block and Archie saw Josephine glance towards the door. ‘Go and have a look if you like,’ he said. ‘The world and his wife’s at the fair, and there’ll be nobody around at this time of night. You’ll love it – William’s as discerning about his horses as he is about his cars, and I know you’re dying to see Shilling.’
‘All right. I won’t be long, though.’
‘Take your time. I’ll go and see what the Snipe’s got for supper.’
The stable block was built of handsome grey stone and took up three sides of a large courtyard, with the fourth open to the ornamental parkland beyond. Horseshoes hung over the arched door, and inside there was a soft light from four hurricane lamps which were nailed to a beam. It was a scene of extraordinary peace, and the only noise came from the horse nearest to her, who – wary of a stranger but interested nonetheless – offered a low-pitched nicker as she entered. She was on her way over to return the greeting when one of the estate workers emerged from a stall further down with a sack of oats in his hand.
‘Oh, I’m sorry,’ she said, startled. ‘I didn’t mean to interrupt, but I didn’t think there was anybody here. I’m staying at the Lodge and I can never walk past a stable.’
The man grinned at her. ‘No reason why you should have to, Miss – they’re friendly enough, and you’re not interrupting. Come and say hello to them. I wasn’t expecting to see anyone either – most people are down at the fair.’
‘You weren’t tempted, then?’ she asked, walking over to the nearest box.
‘No, not this year,’ he said, and carried on measuring out the feed. ‘I usually go, but I’ve got to hold on to my money at the moment.’
‘Saving for anything special?’
Most of the blush was lost as he turned back to the stalls, but she could still see enough of his shyness to warm to him instantly. ‘Yes, if she’ll have me. I want to take her somewhere nice, so I chose the short straw and let the other lads go off to the fair.’ He stroked the neck of the horse nearest to him. ‘It’s not that short, though, if you ask me – they’re a fine lot, these creatures.’
They were indeed, Josephine thought. She looked down the line at the horses; some of them were working animals and others very fine hunters, but they all shared the brightness and vitality that came only from good, knowledgeable care. Their names were over their boxes – Gilbert, Sorrel, Violet, Diamond and Boxer – and five very different faces looked back at her, curious and attentive, with ears which were seldom still.
‘They’re in grand condition,’ she said admiringly.
‘Oh yes – Mr Motley doesn’t st
int on his horses.’ He watched as Josephine held her hand out to the dark-grey Percheron, making no attempt to pat or slap him but gently touching his mane, emulating the nibbling action of another horse’s mouth. ‘You know about horses, then?’ he asked, impressed.
‘A bit,’ she said, as Gilbert twisted his head round and returned the compliment so vigorously that she wondered if the sleeve of her coat would ever look the same again. She glanced round at the other horses and noticed a magnificent grey hunter at the far end of the stables, set slightly apart with no name above its stall. ‘Is that Shilling?’ she asked, and the man nodded. Josephine looked for a long time at the animal she had heard so much about, and couldn’t remember when she had last seen anything as beautiful.
‘He’s something else, isn’t he?’ he said, and there was a note of awe in his voice which she had heard before from people who spent their lives with horses. ‘Worth a bit more than his name implies. That used to be the standing joke.’ He walked slowly over to the horse, but stopped when Shilling began to flare his nostrils nervously.
‘He must have been very disturbed by what happened,’ Josephine said.
‘Yes, he was, and I suppose he’s bound to be a bit suspicious of people after what he’s been through. He hates water, you know – even rain – so it’s not hard to imagine how he must have felt in that lake.’ He held his hand out to the horse, who continued to flick his tail from side to side. ‘I’m sorry you had to go through that, my boy,’ he said softly, and turned back to Josephine. ‘I thought they were pushing their luck to use him for the funeral, but he seemed to get through it all right so he must be getting a bit of his old confidence back.’
Another horse nudged his arm, as if to remind him of his duty, and he obliged with a generous helping of oats. ‘All right, Violet – how could anybody forget you?’ he said fondly, as the old face nuzzled him eagerly.
Josephine looked over Violet’s gate and saw the C mark branded on a back which was hollow with age. ‘Is she a war horse?’ she asked.
‘Yes. She’s the only one we’ve got left now, but there were several here at one time. Mr Motley went over to bring as many back as he could – anything to stop them being sold off to French butchers. I remember one in particular, a chestnut called Timber. She’d lost an eye in the Dardanelles, but she was sound as a bell otherwise and God, was she a beauty. When you gave her her head, it was like riding fire.’
What a powerful image, Josephine thought. She watched as Violet ate contentedly. The hair around her muzzle was mostly grey, but her eyes were half-closed in delight and it was hard to believe that she had ever been shipped off to a world which was as unfamiliar and horrifying to her as it had been to her human counterparts. ‘At least she found a good home in the end,’ she said.
‘And it’s no more than she deserves after what she’s been through. It must have been terrible for them – flogged through the mud by city men who hadn’t a clue about horses.’
Josephine had to agree. She remembered one letter that Jack had sent her just before he was killed. He’d described finding a mule in the middle of the road with both of its forelegs shot away. The poor brute was battling with the mud, writhing and tossing its head, and trying desperately to get to feet which were no longer there. Jack had stopped to put it out of its misery with a bullet and, in so doing, had probably risked his own life and those of his companions – but there were no complaints. It was a long time before the image stopped visiting her in her dreams, and it had never lost its horror. ‘Sometimes it’s too easy to justify the cost,’ she said, stroking Violet. He said nothing, and she wondered if he was quietly thanking fate for the handful of years which had kept his generation from that conflict, or imagining when his turn would come. They stood in silence for a while, both of them taking pleasure from the horses’ obvious happiness. ‘I’d better go,’ she said at last, ‘but I’ll drop in on them again if that’s all right?’
‘No problem,’ he said, and turned back to his work. ‘If it’s not me, just tell whoever’s here that you’re at the house and they’ll let you stay as long as you like.’
Josephine took a last, admiring look at Shilling, and went to find Archie and supper. The elegant line of a formal laurel hedge, dotted with tall, exotic-looking palms, led her on towards the house but she paused at the edge of the kitchen gardens for a moment, enjoying the silence of the evening and the illusion that the crumbling, red-brick walls could somehow protect these ordered, domestic areas from the unhappiness that trespassed on the rest of the estate. She was a guest here and the problems were not hers; nevertheless, she welcomed a peace which seemed as precious and as fragile as the flowers grown in the nearby hothouses. She walked on after a few minutes, through an old arched gate, and was pleased to see that Archie had left some lights on to show her the way. The back door opened straight on to the dairy, where black and white marble slabs on the floor and a series of broad slate shelves along the length of the walls made for a chilly, unwelcoming room that she was glad to leave behind. A short corridor with larders on either side led to the kitchen, and she was drawn towards the cheerful sound of voices. She stood unnoticed at the door for a second, watching as Archie wrestled a large ham out of the oven under the Snipe’s careful supervision; Ronnie was perched on a wooden tinderbox by the hearth, entertaining her father with a long and salacious story about Gertrude Lawrence, while Lettice chipped in and picked idly at the dishes laid out on the kitchen table. Brief as the scene was, it gave Josephine a marvellous sense of how it must have been in that kitchen while the girls were growing up, and the insight into this small, private world – a carefree haven from the responsibilities that lay outside – both warmed and saddened her; whether the sadness was because she sensed that this haven was now under threat, or whether it was a more selfish longing for something similar in her own life, she chose not to analyse.
William was the first to notice her. ‘Ah, Josephine – lovely to see you,’ he said, getting up to welcome her with a kiss. ‘Did you manage to find Shilling?’
‘Yes, and he’s magnificent,’ she said. ‘There’s no doubt about that, but he’s obviously finding it difficult to choose between proud and haunted at the moment – not unlike someone else who’s grieving for Harry, I suppose.’ She looked at Archie, who nodded in agreement. ‘They’re all beautiful in their own way, though – and I’m afraid I already have to confess a particular soft spot for Violet.’ William looked pleased, and she guessed that her preference reflected his own. ‘The estate must have lost a lot of horses to the war – it’s nice to see that you got some back.’
‘Oh, it was terrible,’ William said. ‘We had to beg the ministry to leave us something to breed from. The money was welcome, if I’m honest, but I’d rather have managed without it – it was heartbreaking to lose so many of them, especially when I knew damned well what I was losing them to.’ He thought for a moment, and Josephine imagined the horrific scenes that must have greeted him in France when he went to fetch those poor, bewildered animals. ‘They say that seven thousand horses were killed in a single day at one stage,’ he added quietly. ‘Just blown to bits, and I suppose they were the lucky ones. You wouldn’t wish what the rest of them went through on your worst enemy. Lots of them starved slowly to death, you know – the men used to have to punch hole after hole in the girth just to keep the saddles on. Poor creatures – it was never their mess.’
‘You could say that about the men, too.’ Josephine spoke softly, hoping that Archie was too busy with the Snipe to overhear; he was already preoccupied, and this was not the time to give him reason to dwell on ghosts from his own terrible war. ‘Very few of the people responsible for the mess actually had to deal with it.’
‘Yes, but at least the men knew why they were there. You can’t expect a horse to understand why he has to leave somewhere as beautiful as this.’ Ronnie and Lettice had begun to carry the food through to the library, and William rinsed his cup at the sink, ready to help. ‘Still, we
got a fair few back,’ he said, ‘and they’ve had as good a life as we could give them ever since – no one could stop us doing that.’ He smiled, and Josephine caught a glimpse of the determination which he had passed on to his daughters. It was an attractive quality.
‘You’re lucky with your stable hands, anyway,’ she said. ‘The horses are very well looked after.’
‘Harry’s a hard act to follow, but everyone’s pulling his weight,’ he agreed. ‘When things settle down a bit, we’ll look for someone permanent but, in the meantime, the lads are all doing their share. They’re a credit to the estate.’ Josephine didn’t embarrass William by suggesting that the credit was largely his, and held the kitchen door open for him and the ham. ‘Thanks, Dora,’ he called over his shoulder.
‘Yes, thanks,’ Archie said, embarrassing the cook with a kiss. ‘You’ve done us proud as usual. Can you manage that tray, Josephine?’
She nodded, but lingered behind in the kitchen until he was out of sight. ‘I saw Beth Jacks was at the cricket match,’ she said with an attempt at nonchalance. ‘How is she?’
‘Not too bad, Miss, thank you.’
‘You mentioned another woman last night, Mrs Snipe – someone else from the village who was in the same situation. Did you mean Morwenna?’
‘Morwenna Pinching? Why would you think that?’ She looked hard at Josephine, then went over to the door and closed it quietly. When she sat down at the table, she seemed unable to meet Josephine’s eye. ‘I was very young when I got married, Miss Tey,’ she said, and Josephine realised with horror what she was about to say. How could she have been so insensitive? ‘My husband – well, it turned out he was a weak sort of man, but he made up for that with his fists. At first, it was only when he was drunk. He’d come home late every Friday night, and anything I said would start him off. Then he acquired what you might call a taste for it.’ Her hands – red and rough with years of work – played restlessly with a loose piece of cotton on her apron, and Josephine could only begin to imagine how difficult it was for this proud, reserved woman to make such a confession. Once again, she cursed herself for prying into things which did not concern her, and wondered what on earth she could do to make this less excruciating for both of them. ‘It was much worse when he was sober,’ Dora Snipe continued. ‘It took him longer to tire of it.’
