The Lady

by Anne McCaffrey

  “Her first?” Selina was astonished and looked at Catriona with wide eyes. “But I thought she’d been show jumping for ages.”

  “Blister?” Father and daughter regarded her with similar quizzical expressions.

  She gave a rueful laugh. “No, Blister was an old dear, but not a competition pony— Whoops, Michael, Pat’s having a rough ride!”

  A quick look at the practice field showed the Prince bucking and switching in his usual manner. And even as Michael loped off, Patricia was deposited neatly on the ground. Fortunately there were enough onlookers to capture the pony before he could gallop off, and Pat scrambled to her feet and remounted before Michael could reach her.

  “You’ve just lost another rival, Trina,” Selina said as the next contestant, on a rather headstrong gray, flew off to land on his feet at the other side of the garish wall of paper bricks.

  Philip arrived then, with a sweat rug for Conker and congratulations for Catriona’s excellent round.

  “Save the congratulations until Conker’s won,” Catriona said soberly, watching the next contestant. She had to wait through seven more rounds, and this latest rider looked to be just flying around the course.

  “Look, pet,” Selina said, putting her arm around Catriona, “you and Conker went brilliantly. No one can take that from you even if you don’t win. I know it might sound trite, but how hard you try is more important than winning each and every time. It’s getting there that’s the challenge. If you won every competition, it wouldn’t give you as much pleasure.”

  Just then the final rider burst across the finish line. Even before the announcement was broadcast, Catriona knew that he had won. But she and Conker were second, only a second behind the winner: the second she could have made up by taking a closer turn into the oxer. And being second qualified her and Conker to compete in the August Horse Show. Catriona managed a big bright smile for Selina, who hugged her fiercely, then she swung up on Conker and entered the ring to receive the blue second.

  Astonishingly enough, it was Patricia who managed to collect another first-prize red ribbon for Cornanagh that afternoon. Michael insisted that he was a few hairs grayer after those three rounds. Half a dozen times in the first round alone, he was sure that Patricia would come unstuck or that the Prince, taking corners on one leg, would slip.

  “Patricia, you were not against the clock in that round,” Michael said in a flat tone, barely controlling his anger.

  “Honest, Unk, I tried to hold him in. It was all I could do to steer him, but, after all, we did go clear,” she replied with wide-eyed innocence. “Such a good boy he is!” she added, slapping the pony’s neck affectionately.

  In the second round she seemed to go faster, if anything, but she also appeared to be just a fraction more in control of the pony. She and the Prince finished without a fault and careered out of the ring to a round of applause.

  “Patricia!” Michael glared at her, his lips compressed to hold in what he would not say in front of a large audience.

  “Honest, Uncle Mihall, I tried to go slower, but he can take quite a hold when he wants to!”

  “If you hurt yourself, your father would never forgive me.”

  “Well, I don’t intend to come off,” Patricia said, absently smoothing her left buttock. “Again. Once a day is enough. That pony doesn’t scare me.”

  “I wish something could,” Michael muttered.

  “Well, you’ve only yourself to blame.” She grinned and cocked her head as she looked up at him. “All those hours of lunge work have really improved my seat.”

  Michael held up a stern forefinger. “Pat, I’m warning you. You take any more chances with yourself and that pony, and this is the only show you’ll be in this summer. D’you understand me?”

  During the third round, Patricia did not fly hell-bent around the course. And she had listened dutifully to the comments of her uncle and Mick as they watched the other competitors and nodded as her uncle had told her exactly how to ride her round. What she did do, however, was to cut every corner she could, at a very respectable speed, never so much as checking the pony once. When the Prince soared over the final wall, which now stood at a daunting five feet four, a wave of applause followed horse and rider over the finishing line. There was no doubt of the winner in this competition.

  “By God, Pat, you’re a Carradyne for sure,” Philip cried as they all gathered around to congratulate her. And Patricia, her eyes catching Catriona’s, became almost as modestly self-effacing as the other Irish competitors.

  On the trip home, she proceeded to review every one of her errors until Selina, in desperation, turned on the late news. They all heard that an emergency had been proclaimed in the North, with special laws for the Royal Ulster Constabulary to enforce. Five hundred and fifty extra troops were being flown into Belfast, and the situation in the Falls Road and the Shankill areas of the city was considered explosive.

  That sobered the occupants of the Lancia until Patricia’s curiosity reasserted itself in a series of questions.

  “My daddy says the whole thing’s religious, Selina.”

  “I wouldn’t say it was,” Selina replied carefully. “Though it has been proven that an individual’s religion in the North often limits his job opportunities.”

  “But why?” Patricia asked almost petulantly. “That doesn’t make sense. A man’s religion can’t keep him from a job in the States. There’s a special law to see that it can’t.”

  “It can in Ulster, though not in the Republic, I’m happy to say.”

  As soon as they reached the yard—for they were well ahead of the horse van and the Austin—they started to make up the feeds. Eithne appeared in the feed room door, back from her own day’s outing and dressed in what Catriona thought of as her Longford clothes. She was suitably impressed by the ribbons the girls showed her and the success of all Cornanagh’s entries.

  “Maybe we should eat out again tonight, to celebrate,” she said brightly, “because Bridie has done nothing toward tea. I really don’t know what’s got into her. She’s sitting there in the kitchen moaning and keening, and I can’t get a sensible word out of her.”

  “I’ll go in with you, Eithne,” Selina said, her expression determined, “and see just what she’s on about. We can trust the girls with the feeds.”

  When she and Eithne stepped into the kitchen, Selina could see that Bridie had at least started dinner preparations, for the potatoes were peeled and soaking in cold water and a casserole stood ready. There was even a tart on the sideboard.

  “Now, Bridie, what has got you in such a state?” Selina crouched down by the old woman, who was rocking back and forth, hands crossed over her breast, her face reddened but bare of tears.

  “Sure it’s only the first of the visitations upon him. Only the first! God will not be mocked!”

  “What visitation?” Selina asked, holding Bridie’s small, strong hands in hers to make the woman look at her.

  “Go see yoursel’. In the field. It’s there to be seen. True retribution. The first, but not the last, mark my words.”

  Selina rose, staring at Eithne with real concern. “We’d better check the fields,” she said, and hurried her out the door.

  Just then Michael’s Austin drove into the courtyard, the horn blowing in triumph. Selina raced to his door.

  “Quickly, Michael, something’s happened in the fields,” she said.

  He and Philip were out of the car in a flash. Michael grabbed her hands. “What’s happened?”

  “We don’t know. Bridie’s not coherent, but something has.”

  Michael cursed, glancing at the Austin with the horsebox hitched to it, then began to run toward the strap-iron gate that led to the Ride. Patricia and Catriona appeared from the yard and followed.

  They were just by the copse when they saw Barry running toward them.

  “Oh, Captain, Captain, thank God you’re back. There was nothing I could do, nothing!” The man’s face was distorted with gr
ief. “Nothing to be done, Captain!”

  Michael stood, his face expressionless, while everyone else looked at Barry, afraid to hear the news he bore.

  “It’s the Tulip, Captain. He’s dead!”

  24

  “HEART failure.” Michael spoke tersely into the phone, and Selina suspected that he was fighting to keep his voice steady. “His age. He was rising twenty-four.”

  “Oh, Michael!” It was such an inadequate response that she gritted her teeth, trying to think of more comforting words. The commanding brown stallion had been a part of Cornanagh for almost a quarter of a century.

  “Are you alone?” Michael asked.

  “Yes. David was called to a meeting, something to do with troops in Belfast. Please, come over.”

  She had been reluctant to leave Cornanagh after the sad discovery. But David had been due home and generally cut up quite stiff if she weren’t there to greet him. Lately he’d made the odd dig about her hobby taking up a lot of her time. So it had been infuriating to find him gone, and not even the note he’d left—announcing that his presence had been requested by several important T.D.’s—did much to pacify her. She had had no appetite for the dinner Kathleen had prepared and, with apologies, had sent the woman home.

  Now Michael had phoned because he needed her. Selina blessed those T.D.’s who had required her husband’s presence and left her free to minister to Michael’s comfort. She ran up the stairs, stripping clothes off on her way to the bathroom. She showered quickly and was struggling into a housecoat when she heard the front-door bell.

  Michael was standing on the top step when she cautiously cracked open the door. She flung it wide enough for him to enter, and he closed it behind him, leaning against it as he drew her into his arms. He held her tightly against him, his face buried in the curve of her neck, his fingers gripping her fiercely.

  They stood that way a long moment. Michael was not sobbing, but the tremors that ran through his body betrayed the self-control he was exerting. She wanted to tell him that crying would help, but she didn’t know him well enough yet to make that kind of suggestion. And the knowledge was saddening.

  Finally he released her and held her away from him, looking down at her with a weary sadness in his eyes.

  “A drink?” she asked softly.

  “Several drinks have not helped . . . .” His words ended on a hesitant note.

  “Come, then,” she said, taking his hand and leading him to the stairs.

  A long, loving time later, when she had comforted him sufficiently to relax his lean body, Michael lay with his head on her shoulder, staring at the ceiling. Selina particularly liked his lean warm body resting against hers, the weight of his right leg as it lay across hers.

  “Would talking help?” she asked.

  He shrugged, the bony point of his shoulder nudging her ribs. “Talk will not put life back into the Tulip.”

  “It might put some back into you.”

  He gave a short snort and then, turning from her, stretched out, his arms under his head, still gazing at nothing.

  “I just never imagined Cornanagh without the Tulip.” He sighed heavily and then began to speak in a quiet voice, so altered from his rather crisp tones that she turned her head to catch other changes. “The Tulip was my father’s horse, I think from the moment he was foaled. A case of eyes locking and a rapport developing all in an instant. Tulip always went to my dad first. Even before he tried to suckle his dam, he had nibbled my father’s fingers. I was only just getting fit again,”—he scratched his scarred leg absently—”but my father swore that I’d be able to ride the Tulip when he was ready.” He gave a soft chuckle. “I wasn’t to get that chance for some years.

  “As it happened, the bond between my father and the Tulip grew so strong that he refused to let anyone else break and back him. Oh, we raced the Tulip, had to, to be able to get him any mares. My father used to half die at every race, swearing all the time under his breath that he wouldn’t ever again risk the stallion. But he did, because it had to be. And it was an education to listen to him instruct Eddie Newman, who piloted the Tulip most of the time. With the exception of his first race—and he was third in that—the Tulip won everything he was ever entered in.”

  Michael’s eyes were wide now with cherished memories. “Every morning Father would go to the back door—Tulip was always in the coach house stallion box—and roar good morning to him. And the Tulip would bugle right back.” An infinitely tender smile curved Michael’s lips. “On the one or two days my father might oversleep, the commotion from the Tulip was enough to rouse the dead.” A tear trickled from the corner of Michael’s eye, but his smile widened. “There are few true partnerships between man and mount. They are to be treasured. And now he’s gone.”

  “He’s still there, in a way, isn’t he, in his foals, in Tulip’s Son?” Selina asked, her voice gentle.

  “He’s only a half-bred.”

  “Still, good half-bred stallions will qualify for registering when this new horse board scheme comes to pass.”

  “If it comes to pass.”

  “Well, all those intimate little conversations you’ve been having with the T.D.’s ought to bear some fruit. You told me that you and your father felt that registration of half- and three-quarter-breds would benefit the whole industry. Why not prove it by standing the colt? He won at Mount Armstrong. Put him in the Horse Show, and any other show going; let him be seen and get him known.”

  “It’s not as simple as that, Selina,” he said with a smile, and then his eyes grew thoughtful. “He has got good conformation, and he’ll make a big horse. If he’s inherited half the potential of sire or dam, he should jump. Only stallions aren’t usually show-jumped.”

  “Why not? I mean, he can be trained to behave around mares. And if he’s as good as he ought to be, he won’t go mashing himself over fences.”

  Michael contented himself with a low laugh. “Well, not more than once or twice. Damn, why did I geld Racketeer?”

  “That three-year-old bay?” Selina shook her head and replied matter-of-factly, “Well, what’s done’s done: balls or breath.”

  “Selina!” Michael propelled himself up to one elbow, staring at her in astonishment.

  She laughed. “There, there’s more life in you now. You know, I do believe that you’re more upset about the Tulip than you were about your wife.”

  Michael gave a harsh bark of laughter. “Isabel was never a part of Cornanagh as the Tulip was, and is. And no, I don’t mourn her. That would be sheer hypocrisy.” He let out a long sigh and began to stroke the contour of Selina’s face. His eyes were obscured by shadow, but the wondering touch of his fingers kindled a fire within her.

  “Michael . . . ”

  “Sssh, no, Selina.” He kissed her lightly. “Not tonight. We don’t have nearly enough time. Please.”

  And because she, too, was suddenly unwilling to put into words the conflict he aroused in her, she acquiesced and willingly returned his caresses. There had been a certain satisfaction earlier in giving him comfort, but she herself had not had a release. Now Michael made absolutely certain that she was fulfilled. She was still languorous when she felt him sit up beside her.

  “Michael?” She reached out a hand to detain him.

  “I have to get back, Selina. We must be discreet. I parked up the road.”

  She could hear him pulling on his clothes, covering the long leanness that was so unexpectedly sexy to her. She wanted very much to share more than these few illicit moments. But what about Michael? Had his earlier reluctance to talk stemmed from a desire to keep her at arm’s length—to enjoy their brief affair until it palled?

  The bed sagged as he sat to put on his shoes. Perhaps this really was nothing more than a short affaire, she told herself. Like a romantic fool, she had been trying to build something out of nothing—a brief flare of mutual attraction to fill the void left by her sham of a marriage. Michael had just lost a wife he hadn’t loved; he would
n’t want another entanglement. And yet . . . She hunched her shoulders into the sheet just as he rose.

  Suddenly he bent over her, kissed her cheek and stroked her shoulder in a lingering fashion, for all the world as if he were very reluctant to leave. It threw her into further confusion.

  “God bless,” he said, and left.

  Selina buried her head in the pillow and writhed in frustration.

  Somehow, even though it was Saturday night, Mick had got the knacker to remove the Tulip before Michael got back to Cornanagh. Mick had been listening for the sound of the Austin, and he flagged Michael down at the turn into the drive.

  “Captain, it’s done,” he said, ducking his head down to his chest.

  “Thanks, Mick.” He shifted gears, but Mick’s hands tightened on the open window. “Yes?”

  “He’s not gone, so to speak, Captain dear,” Mick went on hurriedly. “That colt foal now, he did us proud today. Should we not be showing him more? He’s as like his sire as two peas in the same pod. And haven’t we been calling him Tulip’s Son all along?”

  Michael smiled wryly at the thought that his two major comforters had offered the same consolation. “That’s a good notion, Mick. Thanks.”

  All the way up the drive, Michael mulled over the colt’s strengths and faults. He parked the Austin and carefully opened the strap-iron fence, still lost in thought. Then, from nearly a quarter of a century of habit, he started to cross the courtyard to check on the Tulip—and stopped, overwhelmed again by an intense feeling of loss.

  Catriona was lying in bed, still tearful over the Tulip’s death; when she heard her father’s soft curses, she wept anew—for him, for the Tulip, for Cornanagh. Then she crept out of bed, found her sketch pad, and rummaged in her pencil case as quietly as she could for a sharpened pencil. Pastels would just not do for the Tulip.

  Curling up by the window to get the benefit of the long summer twilight, she began to draw the Tulip, head over the railing of his paddock, with her father beside him, outstretched hand under Tulip’s nose. She felt she had to get it down before the Tulip faded from her memory as Blister had. There were a few tear splotches on the bottom of the page when she finished, but they would dry out, she knew.