by K. M. Peyton
“I like it. What we all need more of. Pure pleasure.”
“I’m going to ride him every day.”
Jimmy didn’t say anything, but on the way back he said, “What are you planning for Buffoon?”
“Just to get him fit, happy.”
“What for?”
“To ride.”
“Ride where?”
Tessa didn’t answer.
“He’s too old now, Tessa, to race.”
“Horses win when they’re old! McVidi, Eastern Emperor – sixteen!”
“Freaks. And not turned away during their prime years, and starved.”
“A little race or two, why not?”
“Tessa, think it through. Peter can’t train him for nothing. It’s not fair to ask him. Registering him in your name, getting your colours, all the extras – it costs a mint before you’ve even started. Why is it only rich people have racehorses? Or have them in syndicates, a share of six or twelve? You will never, never be able to afford it.”
“Peter can have all my wages, every penny! And my riding fees, everything!”
She had given away her private plans now. Jimmy had guessed them anyway. This thing at the back of her mind, to ride Buffy on the racecourse, to ride him over the big jumps with the roar of the crowd in her ears … She had seen enough, done enough, to make the ambition a realistic proposition, drawing a veil over all the problems Jimmy was describing. And the money was owed to her mother… the money she was so glibly promising to Peter.
“I only mention it,” Jimmy said, “because I know the way your mind works. And how fierce you are when you want something. It’s called nipping it in the bud.”
Tessa was silent. Whatever he said, she knew the dream would not go away.
“Enjoy what you’ve got. You’ve got him safe and happy, more than any of us thought possible.”
“You said put him down!”
“I know.”
“Now you say… it’s the same, not thinking it can be done – it can be!”
“At Peter’s expense. It’s hardly fair.”
“Not if I earn the money.”
“No, but such a lot of money. You’ve no idea.”
“But if I train him myself, ride him in the afternoon, in my spare time… Peter needn’t spend any time on him.”
She had thought about it such a lot, all her waking time, how she could do it.
“If he runs under Peter’s name, Peter’s got to take a hand in it. Don’t be stupid, Tessa. I just want you to see sense.”
“You always said to me, about being a jockey, if you want something enough you can do it. I want this.”
“Fine, being a jockey. But putting Buffoon in training will cost Peter. You will never have enough to pay for it. And he’s a soft guy. He’ll fall for it if you keep on at him, the way you are.”
“I’ll get him fit, whatever you say.”
Jimmy laughed, looking at her set, angry face.
“Poor Peter,” he said.
But he was wise enough to know that his argument would go home, for Tessa’s independence was total. She had never expected favours.
After that Tessa rode Buffoon alone, every day, in her hours off. She never took him out in her working time, even when there was little to do. Quite often she took him out late, in the long summer evenings, returning in the dusk or near-dark. She loved the evenings, with the fall of the dew bringing the scents out of the ground and the first stars shining over the roofs of the farm below. Buffoon went kindly, as if he too was enjoying his come-back to health and work, and riding alone was a peculiar pleasure, quite different from the exercising in a string of horses that they had known before.
After a month or so she was trotting, and then cantering, as the muscle came up under the shining golden coat. She was never happier, feeling the horse’s returning strength as he stretched out up the long hill. How she loved him! And how nearly she had lost him! And now he was truly hers, not just her horse to do, to look after for someone else. Sometimes the happiness rose up in her so that she thought the top of her head would blow off.
One evening as she rode home down the long valley she sensed that something was wrong in the yard below. The lights in her caravan were shining, but no one would go in there, surely? Even a burglar wouldn’t turn the lights on.
She trotted on, curious, and noticed that there was a long trail ahead of her in the dew, as if someone had run down the valley. No one came that way but herself.
She went through into the yard and rode Buffoon over to the field gate where she quickly slipped off his saddle and bridle and let him loose. Leaving the tack hanging on the gate she turned and ran to her caravan. The door was open.
“Who is it?”
Rather tentatively she entered.
Myra was lying on the bed, face down.
“Mum!”
Tessa ran to her and knelt down, putting her hand on her mother’s shoulder.
“What is it? It’s Maurice, isn’t it? Oh Mum, what has he done to you?”
Myra was too far gone to weep, to have hysterics in her usual way. Her lips were cut and bleeding, her eyes swollen and half-closed, and she was moaning softly. When Tessa went to turn her on her side towards her, Myra screamed in pain. Tessa guessed that her ribs were broken.
“Did he do it?”
“Yes. He found out–”
“About the money?”
“What it was for.”
Myra could scarcely make herself understood through her bleeding lips.
“Mum, stay here. I’ll go and get some help.”
She ran to the house and hammered on the door. A surprised Peter came out.
“What’s wrong?” Alarm came into his face as he saw Tessa’s distress.
“What is it?”
“Please come! It’s my mother! Maurice has half-killed her!”
Peter shouted for Jimmy and they both came running. When they saw the state Myra was in Peter said, “She needs an ambulance.”
But Myra screamed out, “No! No!”
“They’ll get the police in, a case like this,” Jimmy said.
“I won’t go!” Myra sobbed. “I won’t! I’m all right here.”
Tessa could see her point. She wouldn’t want public interference either. The hospital would get the police, surely? Peter and Jimmy understood too.
“She can’t stay here though. We’ll take her into the house, in the spare bed. Get the doctor to her.”
“Not the doctor!”
“Let’s get you comfortable at least.”
She couldn’t argue about that. Peter and Jimmy were used to treating accidents, and helped her skilfully to make the journey across to the house. Their mother was alerted, and in the kitchen Myra’s face was bathed, the blood cleaned off, strong hot tea administered. Tessa hung over her mother, who suffered the pain stoically. It was only the idea of going public with her injuries that made her shout and scream. She made no murmur at the sting of the antiseptic and the agony of the broken ribs.
Peter said, “We’ll get the doctor in the morning to strap up your ribs. We’ll tell him you fell off a horse.”
This caused some amusement. Even Myra almost laughed. But Jimmy said quickly, “No laughing! That’s what hurts the most.”
“You’re not going back, Mum. Not ever,” Tessa said.
“She can stay here till she’s better,” Mrs Fellowes said. “No hurry to move out.”
Remembering Jimmy’s words about exploiting Peter’s kindness, Tessa said quickly, “She can stay in my caravan. I’ll look after her.”
“She’s better here for now.”
Tessa did not argue. The solid walls of the old farmhouse compared with her tacky caravan were more inviting by far. The guest room was large and homely (when had it ever had gu
ests before? Tessa wondered) and Peter and Jimmy got Myra up the stairs and into the bed without hurting her too badly.
“I’ll stay with her,” Tessa insisted. “I can sleep in the same bed. It’s big enough.”
They agreed with that, and Tessa went out and put Buffoon’s tack away and got her things. She was seething with rage against Maurice, working out ways to get even with him – how to hurt him in the way he hurt others. She was too much improved to think about another knife attack, but the desire to get revenge flamed inside her. This, above all his displays of cruelty and arrogance, was the worst yet. And she had seen it coming, and – worst of all – it was her fault. It was a part of what Jimmy had warned her against: that her own crazy ambitions were starting to impinge on other people, the people she was closest to. She felt very disturbed, hating her part in it. And yet…
“He did you a good turn,” she said to Myra. “You’d never have left the place otherwise. You’re not going back.”
“He wouldn’t have me back! He said so! What shall I do? Oh Tessa, what shall I do?”
“Live your own life!” Tessa said fiercely.
And even as she said it she knew her mother had no one to turn to but herself. It was now her turn to take on other people’s troubles, instead of giving other people the burden of her own. Her world was turning upside down all of a sudden and she didn’t like it.
Jeez, what am I getting into? she thought as she lay on the edge of the big bed. And yet she had wanted her mother to leave Maurice for years.
The next day the doctor was called to Myra (who had fallen off a horse) and he strapped up her ribs. He knew who she was and they all knew that he knew how she had come by her injuries but nothing was said, only the grim remark on leaving, “This ought to be reported, you know.”
“Yes,” they said.
Myra with her tough upbringing recovered quite quickly and it was decided she could live in Sarah’s caravan for the time being. She was welcome to go on staying in the farmhouse, but she didn’t want to put upon the Fellowes. Now she had left Maurice she had turned back to her old independent self. She cried a lot and kept saying, “Whatever shall I do?” but between these bouts of self-pity she made herself quite busy round the place, tidying the grass round the caravans, sweeping the yard, cleaning out the tack-room. She stopped wearing her layers of make-up and changed into the old jeans she found in Sarah’s caravan.
One day a new horse came into the yard to go into training for the next season. His name was Galaxy and he was fat and lazy and kind. When Tessa went to fetch Buffoon for her afternoon ride, she suddenly had an idea. Galaxy needed exercising too, and why shouldn’t Myra ride him out with her?
She asked Peter.
He said, “OK, but Myra rides Buffoon. You ride Galaxy.”
“My mother’s a good rider. Was a good rider.”
“Good. She might be very useful in that case.”
After Myra’s initial protests, which Tessa bore patiently (“I can’t! I haven’t ridden for years! Don’t be silly, Tessa! What an idea!”) she was eventually persuaded to change into a pair of Sarah’s old jods and gaiters and venture out to mount Buffoon.
Tessa was determined that her mother wasn’t going to ride Buffoon more than the first few times, because riding Buffoon was what Tessa’s life was all about. But to get Myra riding it was worth it. Peter and Jimmy were in the yard when they mounted and set off, probably to see what Myra was like, but pretending to be doing something else. Although she was so rusty, they could see by the way she mounted and rode through the gate that she had the seat of an old pro. In her teens she had made her living riding out racehorses in Ireland. It was a skill that did not go away, like swimming and riding a bike, although, being Myra, she was making exclamations of dismay about how weird she felt after all these years.
Peter said, having watched them ride away along the track, “She could be useful.”
Jimmy laughed.
He added, “She’s a very attractive woman, now she’s happy.”
Jimmy raised his eyebrows, but didn’t say anything.
Tessa enjoyed watching Buffoon walking beside her, seeing him as other people saw him (although with her rose-tinted spectacles). He was said to be an ugly brute. Certainly he was no picture of a perfect thoroughbred, no delicately-veined Derby winner, but in his very presence, his great bones showing through, sliding impressively under the satin coat, Tessa saw, not ungainliness, but power. His stride was long and easy, the withers enormous with miles of horse in front of the saddle which gave the rider a fine sense of security. Two long ears twitched with interest at passing birds and flying hares, and back to the voice, kindly, and the large, resurrected eyes shone with well-being.
“So he’s Shiner’s colt, this one?”
Myra, now she was riding him, found him more interesting than before.
“Yes. Declan must have bred him.”
“Ah, what’s become of the man, I wonder? Down the drain, I dare say, with all the drink. And Shiner – she’d be an old girl now. How you did love that filly when you were little!”
Tessa did not want this conversation. She had long ago drawn a veil across the pain of leaving Shiner, which had traumatized her life. (How could a horse traumatize a life? she wondered, now.) She hated her past and did not want to think of it now, yet Buffoon tied her to it.
“Let’s trot,” she said, as the track rose to the hill, and she watched Myra posting easily to Buffoon’s long stride as if she had been riding for the last twenty years.
Perhaps Myra could have a job in the yard when the horses came back into training? She could earn her keep! Already she looked like a new woman, out of her stupid tight clothes and with her hair all wild again, just as Tessa remembered her as a child when she laughed and shouted. Maurice had as good as stifled her in that dreary house before he finally duffed her up. Now she was free again. She seemed to realize it herself, sending Buffoon on into a canter as the hill steepened and laughing out loud with enjoyment. Tessa kept Galaxy back as he wasn’t fit but he didn’t fight her and Myra waited at the top.
“I’d forgotten how good it was, to be on a big horse again!”
“You could ride out, Ma, when the horses come in, and earn some money.”
“I could think of worse!”
Tessa hadn’t seen her mother so happy for years. It made her laugh too. Perhaps she would learn to stand on her own two feet again? She hadn’t whinged for quite a while, apart from the “I don’t know what will become of me” chant. But when Sarah came back and claimed her caravan Myra would have nowhere to live. Tessa knew that there was no way she could share her caravan with her mother.
But no doubt that was a problem that could be resolved. For now the future looked promising.
The problem was resolved in a way that brought astonishment to the yard at Sparrows Wyck, and not least to Tessa. When Sarah came back, Myra moved out, into the farmhouse. Mrs Fellowes packed her bags and departed for a “nice little bungalow in the village, what I’ve wanted for the last twenty years” and Myra took over. And then it was quite plain for all to see that Peter and Myra were falling in love with each other. It was mutual, sudden, a flowering of two bereft and needy characters thrown into each other’s path. Peter had never thought of taking a wife, Myra had been stultified by Maurice. Her arrival awoke in Peter a passion he had never guessed himself capable of. There it was! The stable was gobsmacked.
Sarah and Tessa decided there ought to be a party!
“Tell ’em all! Don’t keep it under wraps!” Sarah exclaimed. “It’ll only be gossip if you don’t make it clear.”
“Peter Fellowes and Morrison’s wife!”
It was the talk of the county, with goodwill behind the astonishment. Nobody knew Myra, Maurice having kept her under wraps all their married life, but when she appeared beside the quietly proud and happy Peter, she
looked radiant. The colour was back in her cheeks, her black hair loose and shining, her eyes matching an emerald green dress she had chosen with Sarah which set her Irish colouring off to perfection. She looked to Tessa like the mother of her childhood, more than ten years younger than during her internment at Goldlands. In fact, beside her, Tessa suddenly felt drab and forgotten. It was young people that fell in love in that shouting way, not one’s mother and employer! How could she ever have credited that Peter might become her stepfather?
Tessa was as surprised as everybody else.
Wisbey and Gilly said they had seen it as soon as they arrived back in the yard and Tessa must have been blind.
“But she only looks at that Buffoon of hers. She wouldn’t have noticed,” Wisbey scoffed. “She’s in love with that horse.”
The party was a great success, staged in a local country hotel. Technically it was a stable party, a party for the owners, but everyone came. It was autumn, the start of the new season, and everyone was making plans, talking of their new stars, full of optimism. Prospective new owners mingled with yard-lads and journalists, jockeys and rich daughters.
Tessa, who had never been to a party in her life, felt completely out of her depth. She knew she was still the girl that had stabbed Morrison-Pleydell, pointed out like an animal in a zoo. Maurice was still buying horses, and had San Lucar back with Raleigh for the coming year, but no one had seen much of him. No one was complaining.
Tessa stood watching the crowd chattering and drinking. She had no idea how to dance and realized that she wasn’t much good at conversation either. Even her dress was hopeless, one of Myra’s that Myra had taken in and shortened with her rather wild sewing. It was black and made her look like a witch. The evil fairy. That was what she felt like.
“Hi, Tess.” The voice was hesitant. “You look – fantastic.”
She looked up, startled. The voice was familiar, the sentiments not at all.
It was Greevy, himself looking rather amazing in a dark suit, holding a glass of champagne.
Tessa didn’t know what to make of Greevy these days. He seemed far more friendly, in spite of his father. Tessa found herself blushing deeply, and didn’t know what to say.
