The Secret Life of Evie Hamilton

by Catherine Alliott

  ‘Oh God, oh dear God,’ I gasped, as Molly, spying ponies in the next field, galloped towards all that kept her from their society: a four-foot hedge. The ponies raised startled heads as they saw her. Molly put hers down and judged the take-off. How Anna, who was screaming now, stayed on, I'll never know, but as Molly soared through the air, taking most of the hedge with her, she soared too, lost both her stirrups, but still landed with a thump in the saddle, which I wasn't entirely sure was a blessing.

  ‘Bail out!’ I roared, cupping my hands round my mouth as I ran. ‘Get off her, Anna!’

  ‘Easier said than done,’ panted Caro as we raced after her.

  Meanwhile, to our right, behind another hedge, the one that bordered the lane, the school bus had stopped. Dozens of children's eyes and mouths widened in astonishment as they watched the rodeo show unfold, Anna's cousins amongst them. Molly was now precipitating down a grassy bank, the incline of which only increased her speed, in her determination to reach her new equine best friends, who, having encountered her already today were unconvinced they wanted her company, and were cavorting around their field tossing their heads, necks arched, nostrils flared. Molly, perhaps believing this antipathy had something to do with her human baggage rather than her sharp hoofs, gave an almighty buck, as if to truly announce her presence and calibre, thus discharging Anna, and sending her flying through the air, landing with a bump on her bottom.

  ‘ANNA!’ I screamed.

  Her cousins by now had descended the bus and were flying, horrified, book bags and blazers waving in their hands, across the field, to the scene of the disaster. From different points of the compass we all arrived as one, to converge around her on the ground.

  ‘Anna! Oh, darling, are you all right?’ I flew to her side.

  ‘NO!’ she screamed.

  She was in floods of tears, but even I could see that the alacrity with which she stood up and brushed herself down meant, thank God, only pride was bruised, and perhaps her bottom. Other than that, she was just a good deal shaken up. I wrapped her in my arms and she sobbed piteously on my shoulder. She couldn't actually agree that anything was broken, and she didn't think she had a pierced lung, as Phoebe helpfully suggested, or that her clavicle, which Henry insisted snapped like a wishbone – and he should know, he'd broken his twice in the scrum – was impaired. We all fussed around her, patting and consoling, until at length, her sobs turned to sniffing and gulps. A suggestion of strong tea was made by Jack, and Anna nodded stoically, consenting to being led away to the house by her cousins.

  ‘Put lots of sugar in it, Jack,’ commanded his mother. ‘I'll come in a minute but I need to sort this bloody horse out.’

  ‘And whisky?’

  ‘No!’

  ‘Daddy does sometimes.’

  ‘Do not!’

  ‘D'you want me to come too?’ I called after them as they led her away, hoping to escape the Bloody Horse, but Anna turned and shook her head vehemently.

  ‘You flew that hedge,’ Jack was saying to her, admiringly.

  ‘I couldn't have sat it,’ Phoebe agreed. ‘I've been wanting to jump it for ages, but Mummy won't let me.’

  I blessed them for bolstering her. They were always thrilled to have her in their midst, and now perhaps were pleased, in the nicest possible way, to be encouraging her in something she found difficult, but they excelled at. As Anna limped off, Phoebe's arm round her shoulders, where it had never rested before, Caro strode up to Molly. She was quietly grazing nearby as if butter wouldn't melt, and consented to having her reins seized without a murmur. What, me? her eyes seemed to say. Caro gave the reins a mighty yank.

  ‘This is not a first pony!’ she seethed. ‘I can't believe you bought her!’

  ‘She wasn't like that!’ I wailed. ‘When we saw her she was as quiet as a lamb, so docile. And Anna rode her beautifully. Trotted in circles, just like she does at the stables.’

  ‘Drugged,’ snapped Caro.

  ‘No!’ I breathed, shocked.

  ‘Quite probably.’ She led Molly off across the fields and back towards the stables. I stumbled after her. ‘And this mare –’ she stopped abruptly to stick her thumb in the side of Molly's mouth; she jerked it open and peered in – ‘is four if she's a day. Probably brought over from Ireland and very recently broken, poor thing. Badly too, and then drugged to sell. It's disgraceful. We'll send her back immediately.’

  When we got to the yard she threw Molly in a box. Then she whipped her mobile from her jeans pocket, and punched out a number.

  ‘Mr Docherty?’ Her back straightened like a poker. ‘It's Caroline Milligan here.’

  And she was off. Giving it to him straight, and in no uncertain terms. Letting him know he was a liar, a thief, and no judge of horse-flesh to boot, and that her sister-in-law's cheque must be returned forthwith. This, Mr Docherty clearly declined to do, no doubt informing her in slow, undulating tones that the cheque had been cleared, the transaction made, the deal struck, with both parties seemingly satisfied.

  But Caro wasn't finished. ‘Except that this mare has been drugged,’ she hissed. ‘And unfortunately for you, it shat on my sister-in-law's foot, and that shit is still on that shoe, Mr Docherty, and I shall have it tested forthwith. If traces of promazine are not found in the droppings, I shall be very much surprised!’

  An equally surprised silence greeted this, as Caro, holding the phone away from her ear, triumphantly demonstrated to me, eyebrows raised. Finally, Mr Docherty found his voice. A compromise of sorts was reached: Caro agreed she would return the horse to save him the effort, and he, in turn, would return the cheque. She snapped her phone shut with a satisfied click.

  ‘How did you know about the shoe?’ I yelped.

  ‘Anna told me, just now, when we went to get her a hat. Together with a hysterical account of you feeling fetlocks and attempting to buy a horse unridden. No malice intended, of course.’

  Of course, I thought, following her back to the house, biting my thumbnail. There never was. But why did I feel recently my smarty-pants daughter laughed at me, not with me? Smarty-pants! I'd never thought of her like that. I flushed. And thank God she was smart, actually, in this instance; thank God she'd recounted the story to Caro, who'd had the presence of mind – and the nerve – to use it. Otherwise I'd be one thousand five hundred pounds out of pocket, with a thoroughly dangerous, practically unbroken horse on my hands. Yes, thank God I was stupid.

  The children were munching cake when we got to the kitchen. No plates, so crumbs everywhere, and trails of tea where they'd dripped one tea bag after another to the bin, like so many snails, along with pools of milk, which they were incapable of pouring without spilling. Caro pointed this out as she bustled around, putting the cake on a plate, wiping surfaces, admonishing her offspring. Anna's equilibrium had clearly returned, though, and she was laughing at Jack's impersonation of her face as she flew through the air and hit the ground. Henry was shouting, ‘No – it was like this!’ and pulling something even more wide-eyed and aghast, like Edvard Munch's The Scream. Anna and Phoebe roared with laughter, and then they all shuffled off to the playroom to watch interminable reruns of Friends. Phoebe wanted to know if Anna preferred Chandler or Joey: ‘Anna, Anna! Chandler or Joey?’ and then instantly agreeing, ‘Yeah, Joey's a legend,’ whilst Jack showed off, balancing a plate on the end of a hockey stick, Anna laughing and seizing the remote control, the balance of power restored.

  ‘Nice for her to see them,’ I remarked, as Caro shut the door on them and put the kettle on the Aga for us. Mum's old blue Aga: I knew the exact squeak of the joint as you raised the left lid, which no amount of oil could soothe. I'd never quite got used to Caro moving around this kitchen – cursing the way the window over the sink always stuck as she tried to throw it open, muttering about the loose floorboard – which was ridiculous, really, because she'd been moving around it for years.

  ‘I've always said we'd like to see more of Anna.’

  Damn. Quick as a flash
she'd leaped on that, and I sensed that if I said, well, I'm making the effort now, here she is, she'd flash me a look that said, when it suits you. Which was right, I supposed. Suddenly I felt very tired.

  ‘Look,’ I said wearily, ‘let's forget this pony business. Anna probably isn't quite up to owning one yet, and I can see it's going to be a lot of hassle for you. We'll go back to having lessons at the riding stables. She'll understand.’

  ‘Nonsense,’ said Caro, flicking through her address book as she stood with her back to me at the dresser. ‘She's set her heart on it now. And anyway, you've promised.’ She turned to give me a look that suggested she wasn't the sort of mother to go back on her word. ‘You just went about it the wrong way, that's all. If only you'd listened to me in the first place, we wouldn't be in this mess. Ah, here we are. Camilla Gavin.’

  Why did I let her talk to me like this? As if I was a child? Had I always? I sank into my tea, knowing she was right.

  ‘Who's Camilla Gavin?’ I asked meekly as she punched out a number.

  ‘She's the ex-DC of our Pony Club. A terrifying woman in her day, but she's mellowed slightly, and she does have some terrific ponies. Her children move on so swiftly they're all on horses now, and Pamela Martin told me she'd be happy to let one of the ponies go out on loan.’

  ‘On loan!’ I perked up. ‘You mean I don't even have to buy it?’

  ‘No, but you have to look after it, scrupulously, which will be much harder work than that screw from Docherty's, which you could throw in a field and forget about. It'll probably be quite old, so it'll feel the cold, and it's bound to be kept in. There'll be stables to muck out, rugs to change…’

  ‘Oh, but that's marvellous. If I don't have to buy it and yes, of course I'll look after it! I'm not working, after all…’

  I ignored her pointed, ‘Quite.’

  All of a sudden I was back in my original fantasy, tending to a dear little old white pony, brushing its mane as it gazed sleepily at me, giving it an apple… and not having to part with any filthy lucre. I sat up.

  ‘Excellent, Caro. Definitely ring her.’

  ‘Which is precisely what I was going to do before you went charging off to Lenny the— Camilla? Camilla, it's Caroline Milligan here!’

  I sank guiltily into my tea as her voice went up an octave. She whinnied on in the secret language of horsy women, asking about laminitis, clipping, boxing, proficiency in traffic, but in the nicest possible way, of course, because this was clearly a woman Caro looked up to and respected, unlike me, who she despaired of. I watched as she listened to Camilla's responses, eyes bright, cheeks flushed, bust thrust out: almost as if she were talking to a lover, I thought. I'd seen Caro on the phone to many boys. Seen that light in her eyes.

  ‘Oh, he sounds orfully sweet!’ she was saying in a voice she'd never used at school. ‘Yes, I do remember, came second in the crorss country!’

  When had we become these two women, I wondered, as, phone still clamped to her ear, and in a pair of jeans she wouldn't have been seen dead in years ago, too short, too flared, Caro marched across the room to swat a bluebottle on the window with her Boden catalogue. She wiped the sink while she was there, tossing the dishcloth back in efficiently. When had we stopped throwing away the washing up, rifling through the ashtrays in our Summertown flat for butts long enough to relight? When did we start noticing the dripping tea bags, and when would they, our children, start noticing too, and become different people? Long may they drip, I thought vehemently, because if I found her so changed, how did she find me? Arrogant? Aloof? That seemed to be her constant theme.

  As I listened to the gales of laughter coming from the playroom, I mourned our younger selves. When did Caro stop being the first person I'd go to in a crisis, the sort of crisis I had now? When did we stop getting so pissed we had to hold each other's hair back as we threw up, stop borrowing each other's clothes, painting false freckles on each other's noses with eyeliner, giggling over the Cathy and Claire page in Jackie, lying on the floor and doing up each other's jeans with the hook of a coat hanger? When did we become the sort of women who watched each other's children's exam results like hawks, wanting so much more for them than we'd ever wanted for ourselves? I longed for those halcyon faraway days, before we'd had to grow up and marry and have children and discover our husbands had… don't go there, Evie. Don't. I sank into my tea.

  ‘Oh, Camilla you're a complete star… Yes, I know he's a poppet, I've seen him. Does a dear little dressage test… Well, that's orfully kind of you. Are you sure? Tack as well?… Shall I pick him up?… Golly, if you could pop him over… sooper!’ I shut my eyes. Stop it, Evie, you're exaggerating. Caro laughed down the phone in a confidential whinny. ‘Well, mother's clueless, orbviously – haw haw!’ Thanks, Caro. ‘But daughter's mustard keen… Yes, really light hands. Nice little seat too, and with a few more lessons and a schoolmaster like Hector… Gosh, thank you soo much, Camilla. Soo sweet of you… Ya, you too. Toodle-oo!’

  My eye was twitching manically as she put the phone down with a decisive click.

  ‘There. Sorted.’

  Sorted. Not a word she'd use to Camilla, I'd warrant.

  ‘She's bringing him over Saturday week and you can have him on a renewable yearly loan.’

  ‘But why would someone do that? Why not just sell him? Presumably if he's so flaming good, he's worth a bob or two?’ I was deliberately lapsing into cockney slang, now. I was Fagin, about to pick a pocket or two; either that or Eliza Doolittle.

  ‘Because she's attached to him and she doesn't want him falling into the wrong hands. Doesn't want someone like Lenny Docherty getting his hands on him and selling him for dog meat.’

  ‘Oh. Right.’ I nodded, suitably rebuked. Just then Tim limped in through the back door on a gust of wind, hair tousled and smelling of fresh air and hay, albeit with a split lip. It was a relief to see him.

  ‘Evie! What a treat!’ He swept his flat cap off, which, like Dad, he still wore in the fields, and swooped to kiss me. I beamed. Someone was pleased to see me.

  ‘What's Lenny Docherty got his hands on now then?’ he said, picking up the fag end of our conversation and going to the sink to wash his hands. He rubbed his face vigorously with his wet hands, making it glow bright red, again like Dad, then tossed the lump of coal tar soap back in its dish. He hobbled to a chair and sank into it gratefully, lifting his leg up on a stool with both hands.

  ‘Nothing, happily. Evie bought a horse from him, but don't worry,’ she added hastily, as he turned to look at me in horror, ‘it's going back.’

  ‘You bought a horse from Lenny the Liar?’

  ‘Well, obviously I didn't know he was a liar.’

  ‘The whole of effing Oxfordshire knows he's a liar! He was a liar twenty years ago when he blagged his way into that yard, and he's been lying ever since!’

  ‘Yes, well, I didn't know that.’

  ‘Come on, Evie, he was dealing dodgy horses when you lived here – where have you been?’

  His incredulity was quite hard to take, actually.

  ‘Well, clearly on another planet,’ I said with a fixed smile.

  ‘Clearly!’ he answered, pretty sourly for him. He balled the tea towel he'd been using to dry his hands and tossed it up on the draining board. ‘I can't believe you're so stupid sometimes.’

  He heaved himself heavily to his feet and left the room. I held it together until he was safely in the downstairs loo, where, in the manner of a man who could, within the hearing of his wife and sister, he embarked on a very noisy pee. And then I put my hands over my face and burst into tears.

  11

  Caro was beside me in seconds, swooping to my side, astonished.

  ‘Oh, now don't be silly, Evie. Gracious, it's not that bad, it's only a pony!’

  ‘I-it's not that,’ I gulped, gasping for breath, ‘it's e-e-everything!’

  In another moment she'd kicked the kitchen door shut with her foot and in a swift, economical movement had a chai
r pulled up beside me and an arm round my shoulders. ‘Everything?’

  Was it me, or was there a tremor of excitement in her voice?

  ‘It's Ant and Anna and – oh God – it's all such a mess, Caro! And I'm not supposed to talk about it but it all wells up inside me and sometimes I think I'm going to burst!’ As I paused to wipe my face with the back of a trembling hand I saw her forehead furrow, genuinely concerned now. A bit of trouble in her sister-in-law's camp was secretly to be gloated over – Anna caught at school with a shampoo bottle of vodka, perhaps, or failing a piano exam. But a lot, a big mess, threatened the whole family.

  ‘What?’ she said anxiously. ‘Evie, tell me. Is it Ant? Is he having an affair?’

  I shook my head. It was full of snot and tears and felt terribly heavy, and the tears just wouldn't stop.

  ‘No, he's not, but he was, did have one – well, a fling – and I just can't – just can't seem…’ But it was no good. I felt my face buckle as I dissolved again.

  Caro swung me round to face her, both hands on my shoulders. ‘He had an affair? Ant?’ I could tell she was flabbergasted. Happily we heard the front door slam as Tim exited stage left. ‘But – but that is so unbelievable! He's just not the type! When? Recently?’

  ‘No,’ I looked up; managed to confine myself to some hiccupy shuddering. ‘No, years ago. Years and years ago, when we were engaged.’ I felt terribly calm suddenly, having said it. And flat. I sat back in my chair, wiped my face with my sleeve.

  ‘Oh!’ She sat back too. ‘You mean – not when you were married?’

  ‘I mean about a month after we got engaged.’

  Her eyes roved back, rolling away the years, remembering. Recalling that time. She shrugged helplessly. ‘Oh, well, I suppose… I mean, an awful lot was going on then, and he was very young—’

  ‘Not that young, thirty.’

  ‘No, but so much had happened…’