Sweetheart, Sweetheart

by Bernard Taylor

  Silence between us. And in the silence I heard the sound of horse’s hooves on the road. We both turned and together saw She­lagh come into view astride the big chestnut mare. She waved to us, called “Hi!” and pulled the horse up next to the front gate. I walked towards her. “You cut quite an impressive figure,” I said.

  She laughed. “Oh, yes, fine seat and all that.” She spoke like some English county duchess. I nodded in agreement. “An absolutely splendid seat.” She turned her smile then, directing it past my shoulder to Jean Timpson.

  “Hello, Jean. How are you today?”

  “. . . Fine, thank you, miss . . .”

  She­lagh’s eyes came back to me; there was a question in them. I shrugged my eyebrows.

  “Are you having a good time?” I asked her.

  “Fantastic. You don’t know what you’re missing.”

  “Maybe.”

  She looked, obviously concerned, at Jean Timpson again, and then back to me. Then she smiled. “I just thought I’d come and show you; give you a little treat. Give you a little cause for pride.”

  “You have. Indeed. I’m proud. I’m proud.”

  “And so you should be.”

  Glancing round I saw that Jean was looking straight at me. Then she lowered her eyes and came past me. I opened the gate for her and she went through under the arch. It was an awkward moment, for both of us—all silence and averted eyes, while Shelagh looked down not knowing what the hell was going on. As Jean Timpson got near to the horse she looked up at She­lagh as if she might say something. But she didn’t. She turned to the right and, footsteps quickening, walked away. In a few seconds she had gone from sight, hidden by the screen of the hedgerow and the oaks.

  “How’s the horse behaving?” I asked She­lagh after a moment.

  From where she sat I could tell that Jean Timpson was still in her view. She­lagh was watching her, frowning slightly, not hearing me. I repeated my question. She turned back to me.

  “Oh, lovely. Such a sweet, placid nature.” She lowered her voice, added: “What’s wrong? What’s up with Jean?”

  “. . . I don’t know.”

  “She looks—upset.”

  “Oh, she’ll be all right.” Changing the subject I asked, “Have you had a good ride?”

  “Wonderful.” She pointed back past the village where the hills rose up. “It was marvellous.”

  “Rather you than me.”

  She grinned. “I’d better get back now.” Clicking her tongue, she pulled on the reins and turned the mare to face down the hill. “After all, I’ve got better things to do than stay here talking to you all day.”

  I grinned back. “The feeling’s mutual, I’m sure.”

  I watched as she dug in with her knees and the mare moved forward. On my side of the hedge I kept pace with them for a few yards and then stopped as they drew ahead. She turned, waved to me. “See you soon.”

  About ten yards further on I saw her stop. I leaned over the hedge and saw Jean Timpson moving towards her from the shade of the trees. She­lagh bent down in the saddle. I couldn’t hear what was said, but some exchange was made, and then Jean was out of sight again—this time hidden by the broad body of the horse.

  And all of a sudden the mare gave a loud, vibrating whinny. I saw the great head rock back, the eyes rolling in fright and shock as it reared. I saw Jean Timpson reaching up, her hands moving. I heard She­lagh’s scream, saw her own hands flailing, clutching, and the next moment the horse had leapt away.

  I threw my carton of cigarettes to the ground and dashed to the gate. The chestnut mare was moving as if pursued by all the hounds of hell. For some yards it kept a straight course and then, suddenly, with She­lagh desperately clinging on, it veered sharply to the left, leaving the road and flinging itself into the wheatfield.

  19

  In seconds I was through the gate and running as fast as I could down the road and into the field. Up ahead the horse plunged onwards, and I ran in its wake, following its track in the wheat, and watching as it got further and further away from me with every second, eventually seeing it disappear from my sight into the trees at the far edge of the field. I ran on through the broken wheat, cursing my deformity and my unrhythmic stride. The ground was rough beneath my inadequate sandals; I felt about as nimble as if I were trying to make progress through molasses.

  Slowing, at last, I came to a stop and stood gasping for breath, looking about me. Down to my right the fields and hedges fell steeply away towards where the village lay; I could see the road winding by at the foot of the steep slope. There was no sign anywhere though of the horse or its rider. I called out wildly, “She­lagh!” and heard nothing in return but the sound of birds crying and my own breathing. And then suddenly, there on the horizon I saw the horse break from cover and come charging out into the open. Right there where the earth met the sky it reared up—the size of a toy in the distance—then whirled and took off down the hill towards the road below.

  My heart was thudding from my exertions, and now my rising fear only increased that thudding; I knew that once the horse got well set on its course, with its own weight bearing it on, there would be nothing anyone could do to stop it. I swerved to the right, keeping ahead of it, my fear and desperation keeping me balanced somehow. And seeing the mare taking a semi-circular route I increased my speed, feeling the flesh bouncing on my cheeks as I ran on in the desperate hope of heading her off.

  Coming up against the hedge at the end of the wheatfield I didn’t hesitate but scrambled through, while the briars tore at my skin and petals of dog roses fell about me like a gentle shower of pink snow. In the ditch beyond I tripped and sprawled, got up and out and ran on again, pounding over coarse grass, leaving the wheatfield further and further behind.

  Up ahead I could see the road clearly now; it wasn’t more than two hundred yards away. And I was still in front of the horse. Half turning, briefly, it looked now as if it was coming straight at me, and only moments later I heard the thundering of its hooves. She­lagh, I saw as the horse came on, had thrown herself forward over its neck and was frantically clinging on with both hands, while the reins and the stirrups danced, madly, useless.

  The horse drew closer still, and I put on a spurt; I had to try to keep level with it—if only for a couple of seconds; the hard surface of the road was just beyond the hedge, too near, too dangerously near.

  “David . . . !”

  She­lagh screamed at me in terror, her face a white blur. The horse was just ten yards behind me, then five, then two, and then it was there, right beside me. We were running level. I could see its eyes rolling in its head, and the froth from its mouth hung and splashed onto my arm as I leapt sideways, clutching for the bridle.

  I didn’t have a hope in hell. Even as my fingers touched the bridle the mare swerved violently aside, her flank catching me a crashing blow that sent me reeling, so that the earth spun and I slammed down, rolling over on the rough turf, the breath knocked from my body.

  As I staggered to my feet again, dazed, sucking in air, I was just in time to see the mare nearing the hedge at the bottom of the slope. She was moving much too fast to stop. I watched her as she got right up to the hedge, saw her suddenly stretch herself, reaching up; I watched as She­lagh slewed sideways in the saddle, hands clutching at the sky. Higher the horse rose up beneath her—and then She­lagh was gone, pitched headlong out of sight beyond the hedge.

  I had one last glimpse of the mare. Free of her rider she managed somehow to clear the hedge. But, propelled onwards, downwards by her own weight and momentum even she couldn’t stop herself now. A second later, in one single flash of shining chestnut, she had crashed across the tarmac and smashed into the stone wall that ran along the far side of the road. The wall shattered. The mare fell.

  “She­lagh . . . !”

  I leapt the ditch and scrambled through the hedge. She­lagh lay partly on the grass verge, partly in the road, prone, her right arm flung out and forward and her ha
ir spread, hiding her face from view. I knelt beside her and brushed the hair from her forehead where I saw an ugly graze etching itself in blood against the pallor of her skin. Ripping off my shirt I rolled it into a pad and then gently, so gently, eased up her head a fraction and placed the makeshift cushion beneath her cheek. Hearing the sound of an approaching car I ran out into the road, arms waving, seeing it as it rounded the bend and yelling for it to stop, stop, stop . . . And then Bill Carmichael, the man from the garage, was getting out of the car, running past me. I watched him kneel beside She­lagh’s body and I shouted at him, my voice shrill, “Do something! For Christ’s sake, do something!” I was going in circles, quite useless in my panic.

  “Take it easy,” he said, and then he was straightening up, running back to his car and reappearing with a rug which he softly spread over her. “Stay here.” He stood up again. “I’ll go and phone for an ambulance.”

  As he drove swiftly back towards the village my eyes took in, briefly, the sight of the chestnut mare where she lay just a few yards away beneath the wall. The animal’s head lay in a widening pool of blood, her neck bent at a crazy angle, eyes staring sightlessly past me in the direction of the fields. She was quite dead.

  She­lagh, though, was alive. She was alive. I laid my hand softly on her back and felt the gentle swell of her breathing beneath the chequered rug.

  “She’ll be all right.”

  The young, red-haired doctor looked down at me as I sat hunched in my chair in the hospital waiting-room. I nodded my gratitude for his words.

  “She was lucky,” he went on. “God knows what would have happened if she hadn’t come off when she did. That’s what saved her, being thrown when the horse took the hedge. If she’d gone into the wall, too . . . well . . .” he let his hands fall; they told the rest of the story. My fingers trembled as I fiddled with the buttons of my shirt. There were little traces of blood on it; She­lagh’s blood.

  “She’s concussed, certainly,” the doctor went on, “but we won’t know any more than that until we’ve had a chance to examine her.” Briefly he touched my shoulder. “But don’t worry. She’s in good hands.” Glancing over to where Bill Carmichael hovered by the door, he added: “What are you going to do now—? Get your friend to drive you home again? It would probably be the best thing. There’s nothing you can do here. She’s only just regained consciousness.”

  “I’ll stay—if that’s all right. I must. At least till I’ve seen her.”

  “That might be a little while yet.”

  “It doesn’t matter how long.”

  When he had gone Bill Carmichael came over to me. “Is there anything I can do?” he asked.

  I shook my head. “No, Bill, thank you. You’ve been so kind.”

  “It was nothing.”

  “Thank God you came by when you did. I was like a chicken with its head cut off.” Smiling, I added, “You’re making a habit of it.”

  “A habit?”

  “Calling the ambulance. First my brother and now She­lagh.”

  “Like you said—Thank God I was there.” He shook his head. “I don’t understand Mrs. Stoner—letting her go out on a horse that wasn’t safe.”

  “It wasn’t the horse,” I said, “or She­lagh.” Carmichael looked at me and I added: “She’s a very good rider. She grew up with horses. And anyway, she’d told me, just before it happened, how well-behaved the horse was . . .” I had a flashing image of the mare rearing up, of Jean Timpson standing there, so close, so close. “It wasn’t the horse,” I said again. “Or She­lagh . . .”

  His look continued blank, not understanding. After a moment he said, “Look, when you decide you want to go home just give us a call and somebody’ll come and fetch you.” He handed me a card with a number and an oily thumbprint on it.

  After he was gone I continued to sit there. Other visitors came and went. At last, nearly two hours later, a young nurse came over to me and said yes, I could go in and see She­lagh for a minute. “But only for a minute,” she emphasised as she led me into the corridor.

  At last I stood looking down over She­lagh’s bed, looking down into her eyes. There was a white bandage around her head. She gave me a weak smile that came and went like a faulty neon sign.

  “The doctor says you’re going to be okay,” I said, pushing the words past the lump in my throat. “You’ve had a hell of a bump and a bad shock, but you’ll be okay.”

  Her eyes closed briefly in acknowledgement.

  “You’ve got to be okay, anyway,” I said. “I’ve got a wedding coming up on Saturday and I’d like you to be there.”

  Drowsily she smiled at me. I whispered, bending closer:

  “Oh, She­lagh, you’re all that matters to me. Only you . . . Always.” It was true. I felt it so strongly; not to be denied, ever. I bent closer to her bruised, pale face. “I love you so much . . .”

  Her eyelids were flickering; she was growing sleepy. At my elbow the nurse appeared, whispering to me that I must go, but adding that I could come back in the morning.

  When I looked down at She­lagh again I saw that she was asleep. I wanted to kiss her cheek; I moved to do so but the nurse’s gentle but firm hand restrained me and, feeling slightly cheated, I turned and tiptoed away.

  In the corridor the doctor stopped me and told me that She­lagh’s x-rays had shown up a fine hairline skull fracture. When he saw panic in my face he added quickly:

  “It’s nothing to be alarmed about. She’ll be as right as rain in no time at all.”

  I said stupidly, “We’re supposed to be getting married on Saturday . . .”

  He smiled. “Well—we’ll have to see how it goes. You might make it okay.”

  Back in the waiting-room I phoned Bill Carmichael and in just over twenty-five minutes he was there. As we drove away he asked me whether I’d been in touch with Mrs. Stoner at the stables.

  “About the horse, you mean . . .” I shook my head. “I haven’t even thought about it.”

  “If you like I’ll give her a call—and tell her . . .”

  “Thank you. I’d be grateful.”

  “She’s probably learned about it by now, anyway,” he said. He paused. “Strange that that horse should behave like that . . .”

  “Yes,” I said, then: “What do you know about Jean Timpson?”

  He looked a bit puzzled at the suddenness of my question. “Well . . . not that much, really . . .”

  “How much?”

  “Well . . . things have been said . . .” He kept his eyes on the road ahead. “But I don’t concern myself with it.”

  “It’s not just idle curiosity,” I said. “I really do want to know . . .”

  After a pause, he said, “I’ve known her since we were at school. I don’t really remember much about her there, though. She was always so shy, so quiet; never the kind you’d really notice. A couple of years younger than me, I think . . . Later, when she left school, she went to work at the stables and——”

  “Yes,” I cut in. “She­lagh mentioned that. So she knows about horses.”

  “Jean? Oh, yeh, she ought to. She was at the stables quite a few years. Probably still be there if that chap hadn’t turned up.”

  “Who was that?”

  “I don’t remember his name. He wasn’t from the village. Just sort of came here and stopped for a while, then went off again.” He gave me a half-glance. “He knew your sister-in-law. When she came here to live he came back and stayed with her.”

  “Alan De Freyne.”

  “Yes, that was his name. A bit of a swine, leading Jean on like that. And he did. Everybody knew that. He didn’t care for her at all, not really. Just in it for what he could get.”

  “From Jean Timpson . . . it’s hard to imagine.”

  “Oh, you must understand—this was a few years back. She’d only be about twenty-five, twenty-six then. She was a really nice-looking girl. Very pretty.”

  “And what happened?”

  “Well, he su
ddenly left, and then, only about a month or so afterwards, Jean left as well. To get away from it all, I expect. Her dad packed her off.”

  I remembered the name of the place she had mentioned. “Marshton Ridge,” I said.

  “Is that where it was? I know she’d gone to stay with relatives somewhere.”

  “With her aunt. She had a baby there.”

  “Oh, yeh, everybody knows that. I think it was born dead or she lost it soon after it was born. She didn’t come back here for quite a time then. She got a job as a nursemaid with some family, looking after their boy . . .”

  “And there was an accident, right? So her father said.”

  “Yes. It was in the last week of her job.”

  “She was leaving them?”

  “No, the family was leaving England. Selling up and going abroad. Then, just a couple of days before they were due to go the little boy was dead. Drowned. A pool in the garden, I think.” He clicked his tongue. “Really sad.”

  He drove in silence then, and I realised he wasn’t about to add anything else. “What happened,” I asked, “then?”

  “Oh—she went away for a time—somewhere else—and then after a time she came back to live with her dad again.” He paused. “I remember seeing her not long after she got back to Hillingham. There was quite a difference in her. Mind you, it had been over ten years since she’d left.”

  “Where did she go?”

  “Marshton Ridge, didn’t you say?”

  “No, you said she went somewhere else after that—and before she came back to Hillingham . . .”

  “About two years, I think.”

  “Where to?”

  He didn’t answer. I said again,

  “Where to?”

  “Elmacre, I believe.”

  “I never heard of it.”

  “. . . It’s a mental home.”

  An hour after he’d dropped me off at the cottage I phoned the hospital and asked after She­lagh’s progress. I didn’t care if I was being a nuisance; I wanted to be reassured. They said she was as comfortable as could be expected.

  After that I felt lost. After her presence there in the cottage my sudden aloneness was difficult to cope with, and the company of Girlie couldn’t do anything to make up for my sense of loss. Aimlessly I wandered about the house, unable to settle to anything. On the carpet the jigsaw lay where I had left it, still unfinished. I lit a cigarette, poured myself a drink and sank into my armchair. On the shelf the clock ticked into the silence, underlining the slowness of the passing of time.