Flying Changes

by Caroline Akrill

  Since I had come to Pond Cottage Riding School, I had determined not to think of Oliver, but I had not succeeded. He had been lodged in my heart, immovable as a piece of grit, and I thought of him obsessively. I had even thought to write to him, begging that there be no enmity between us, apologising for the things I had said, for the deceitful way in which I had plotted to leave him. I had even addressed an envelope, marking it ‘personal’ in firm, brave script, but that had been before I had visualised him opening it, slitting the top with the deersfoot paper knife he used for his own private correspondence, scanning the page with cool, negligent eyes, putting it aside as just another letter to be answered later out of duty or common politeness with something briefly adequate, dictating to the waiting John Englehart, whose typing was sure to be so much better than mine. I didn’t write the letter. I tore up the envelope.

  Even now, staring across the endless brown acres which stretched on either side of the bridleway, I was unable to prevent other pictures forming in my mind; pictures of dressage horses cantering to the achingly beautiful music of Beethoven; pictures of Oliver and San Domingo sweeping into extension across the diagonal in a movement so technically brilliant, yet so spontaneously joyful, that my heart was wrung to remember it: and pictures of fenced and husbanded acres of lush and verdant pasture – I had not realised until I had returned to this landscape of mud and plough laced with the dead wood of winter, how hungry one could become for green.

  I forced my attention back to the present giving Davina some of the promised instruction, demonstrating simple exercises designed to relax shoulders, arms, wrists and hands. There was precious little comfort to be drawn from the past, and no profit whatsoever to be gained from speculation about what might have been. I had to accept that things were unalterably the way they were, and that Oliver was now what he had become. And yet what had Oliver become? I wondered if I really knew. I wondered if I really wanted to know.

  I shortened the reins for my clumsily-fingered beginner infant and in the course of this I noticed that the sun had broken through the cloud for the first time in days and, glancing over a hedge as we traversed a headland beside a wide, bramble-filled ditch, I saw that the vast and rolling acres were miraculously hazed over with the ethereal green of growing seed. Riding along on the pink-nosed cob behind the chattering line of children with the sunshine drying my jersey, with the ponies’ hooves rattling loose flints from the path, with a slight steam beginning to rise from swaying, rounded rumps, I told myself firmly that if this was how my life was going to be from now on, I had better find something to like about it. Surely, given time, I could cut Oliver out of my life. Francesca had managed to do it, and so could I and riding school work need not always be so grim. Already the weather had started to improve, soon the ground would dry, the mud would be a thing of the past, even the grass would grow eventually. Why, life would almost become tolerable.

  Cheered by these thoughts I smiled down at my infant beginner whose face, flushed by fresh air and enjoyment, beamed up at me, as pink and as round as a little balloon. I was not at all prepared for what happened next, for what did happen next was that there was a sudden and ear-shattering explosion just behind the hedge.

  For a split second nothing happened, then simultaneously, a lot of things happened at once. Like a starburst, ponies fled the spot in every direction, either riderless, or with children partially adhering to various parts of their anatomy. The fat piebald leapt into the air, swerved away into the plough, dragged the leading rein from my grasp, and began to negotiate the furrows by means of rapid bunny hops whilst my beginner infant wobbled perilously in the saddle. Davina’s dun whirled round several times and vanished backwards into the ditch from whence it instantly reappeared, wild-eyed and beset by brambles, scrabbling with its front hooves to gain a purchase on the bank with Davina clinging grimly to its neck, whilst the pink-nosed cob accelerated away from the spot backwards. His determined and energetic progress was only arrested when his rump came into unexpected contact with a vehicle which, unremarked in the pandemonium, had driven up behind us on the bridleway. The horse was so astonished, and his leap into forward motion was so abruptly executed, that I fell off backwards over his tail and landed on the bonnet of a Land Rover.

  I had barely managed to slide to the ground, in a somewhat shocked and defensive state, when Francesca, whose horse had taken off at the moment of explosion like a rocket-assisted jet, pursued involuntarily by her beginner mount because she could not or would not relinquish the leading rein, came galloping out of the commotion like an apocalyptic avenger, bearing down upon us with the chestnut awash with sweat, its nostrils showing vermillion and its eyes rotating crazily in their sockets. She hauled the horse to a halt inches from the vehicle and faced the driver with a wild and passionate fury.

  “My God you’ve gone too far this time, Simon Hooper,” she screeched, “shooting at innocent children and animals on the public bridleway – I’ll have you jailed for this! I’ll have you put away this time, you see if I don’t!”

  “Now wait a minute.” Simon Hooper said in a contentious voice, “I didn’t shoot at anybody.”

  Considering that he had been behind the wheel of the Land Rover, and not behind the hedge, it seemed to me that this might well be true, but I was prevented from saying so by the arrival of Davina, her jodhpurs a mess of pulled threads and blood beading along a bramble-whipped cheek. She was dragging the dun pony who was plastered with mud and had a long blackberry briar attached to the end of his tail.

  “If you wouldn’t mind, Kathryn,” she said in a controlled voice, “I think I would prefer to walk back to the stables.”

  “Oh no you don’t,” Francesca snapped. “Get back into the saddle.”

  “Now look here you two,” Simon Hooper interrupted, “you’re not going to blame me for this. All I’m doing is testing a new type of crow-scarer on my own land, and there’s nothing unlawful in that.” One of the returning pupils hooked a pony onto the wing mirror of his Land Rover. He snatched it off angrily, flinging the reins in my direction.

  The fat piebald, having worn itself out over a wide arc of plough, now came trotting back to the familiar bulk of the roan cob and by a miracle, my beginner infant was still clinging to the pommel of the saddle, albeit with a dangerously fraught countenance.

  “My word,” I said in what I hoped was a reassuring tone, “aren’t we having fun?” Simon Hooper, my beginner infant and Davina looked at me as if they suspected I might have sustained brain damage.

  “Are you telling me you’re using a crow-scarer within inches of a public bridleway, regularly used by children?” Francesca stared down at Simon Hooper. Two patches of colour burned high upon her cheeks and her eyes glittered with outrage.

  “I’m telling you that I’m testing a crow-scarer on my own land and that I’m perfectly entitled to do so,” he said, “perfectly entitled.”

  He picked up a squalling child from the vicinity of his left trouser-leg and sat it on the nearest vacant pony. He looked entirely exasperated and upset and to make matters worse the child gripped him round the neck, refusing to be left in the saddle.

  “No, No!” it shrieked, “I’m not riding Misty, I’m riding Foggy!” Practically unhinged by the passage of events it kicked him energetically in the chest with its size eleven jodhpur boots and once released, tore off into the plough where Foggy was cantering in relentless but diminishing circles, as if attached to an invisible lunge.

  “Oh my God!” Distraught, Simon Hooper wrenched open the door of the Land Rover and threw himself into the driver’s seat. He couldn’t actually go anywhere because his progress in every direction was baulked by equines, and Francesca, not in the least defeated by his retreat into the vehicle, now hung down the chestnut’s sopping shoulder and continued to lambast him through the window.

  “Just because your father happens to own land,” she shouted, “it doesn’t give you licence to terrorise innocent children and ponies – they c
ould have been maimed, they could have been killed, you could have been jailed for manslaughter!”

  “Francesca,” I protested, “nobody’s been maimed, nobody’s been killed as far as I can see.” Now that I had recovered from the shock, I felt rather sorry for Simon Hooper, especially as the children were now back in the saddle, suffering no more than the odd involuntary hiccup, and beginning to take a lively interest in the argument raging around the Land Rover.

  “I did put wire across the bottom of the ride,” Simon Hooper turned to me, having abandoned all hope of sensible argument with Francesca, “I put it up as a preventative measure, for your own protection, you might have been warned by that.”

  “Yes,” I agreed, “in retrospect, I suppose we should.”

  I rather liked the look of Simon Hooper, he had a nice face, good cheekbones, honest grey eyes, black wavy hair worn a little too long. He was not beautiful, not elegant, not like Oliver, but, Francesca could improve her lot considerably with the help of Simon Hooper, I thought. If she could bring herself to be pleasant to him, if he could begin to see her as something other than an enemy, all of Francesca’s problems might be solved. As a result of this flight of fancy I saw, not only a satisfactory love affair, but horse’s heads over the rows of the empty loose boxes beside the uninhabited farmhouse at Moor Park, the linking of bridleways to provide miles of uninterrupted riding, bins filled with corn, barns stuffed with hay and straw. No wonder, I thought, the ambition of every landless horsewoman is to marry a farmer.

  “But you can’t put wire across a public bridleway,” Francesca cried, “it’s illegal!” Across the bonnet of the Land Rover she scowled at me, sensing treachery.

  Simon Hooper took advantage of this momentary lapse of attention to make his escape. He started up the Land Rover. As the engine roared into life, the chestnut jumped backwards in dismay, nearly unseating Francesca as its back legs sank into the plough. Somehow I managed to drag the roan cob, the dun and the fat piebald out of the way as the vehicle lurched forward, but I could only stand by and watch as an aged brown mare, ill-advisedly tied to the rear bumper whilst her rider answered an urgent call of nature behind the hedge, had the bridle snatched off her face.

  “Francesca!” I shouted, “the bridle!”

  Francesca, grabbing at loose reins, thrusting for lost stirrups, set the chestnut leaping hysterically after the Land Rover. “Stop, you stupid fool!” she yelled, “you’ve got my bridle!”

  She made a few spectacular, but abortive lunges down the chestnut’s neck in the direction of the flying leatherwork, but Simon Hooper was not to be arrested. He accelerated away at top speed.

  I used my belt as a choke halter to lead the aged brown mare. Francesca had little to say to anyone on the ride home, but indignation radiated off her like a heat haze.

  FOUR

  “Now that you are here,” said St. Luke, and again, “now that you are here,” he repeated, as if stringent and sustained measures had inexplicably failed to prevent our arrival and he must now accept our presence with good grace, “perhaps you should tell me what you think of my little improvisation.” By means of a claw hammer, he directed our gaze up into the church roof. “You do not think,” he said with some anxiety, “that it will cause offence?”

  It was difficult to know what to say. Strung out from the ancient, wormy beams above the wall-mounted pulpit was a black and sinister shape. In the gloom it could have been the flayed skin of a bullock or a gigantic bat’s wing, instead of what it was; an oddment of heavy gauge polythene stretched to form a canopy, gathered at five points and secured with bailing twine. It was quite monstrous, but, “I don’t think it will cause offence exactly,” I said.

  “And after all, who is there to cause offence to?” Francesca wondered. She glanced over her shoulder as if she might unexpectedly catch a glimpse of someone – not God, in all probability. In this cold, dismal place with its still, damp, unwholesome air, it would more likely be the devil she expected to see, twitching his tail out of sight behind the black box-pews. “What is it for, anyway?” she wanted to know.

  St. Luke sighed, slipping the hammer absently into a jacket pocket already torn and baggy from misuse.

  “The rain has found a way in at last. One always knew it would, but one hoped, all the same… Somehow the vestments and the sacred text must be sheltered from the deluge.”

  It was typical of St. Luke that he did not say protect oneself from the deluge. “The situation worsens. At evensong on Sunday I was obliged to open an umbrella.”

  “How absolutely terrible. Did anyone dare to laugh?” If it had happened in our youth, when Oliver, Francesca and I had regularly attended the church, I knew we would have found it irresistibly funny.

  “One could wish there had been a congregation present to find it amusing.” St. Luke permitted himself a little sigh which might, or might not, have been construed as regretful.

  “But surely you didn’t carry on? What was the point if …”

  “The service is an offering to God,” Francesca reminded me, “not to the congregation.”

  “Of course.” But how awful it would have been, how lonely, in this church. I could imagine it all too well, the gloomy shadows not quite banished by the stretching, guttering candle-flames, the rain drumming upon the corrugated iron sheeting which patched the leaking, slipping thatch, the snake-like hissing of the bottled gas heaters fruitlessly warming the air for a congregation that never came. St. Luke performing the office, opening his umbrella. I wondered, not for the first time, why he continued to oppose the diocese over the closure of St. Chad’s, when at his other church there was order and electricity, there was a congregation to be saved, to be warmed, to arrange flowers on the altar, to polish the brass, repair the hassocks, ring the bells, to put pound coins on the collection plate. St. Aidan’s was a proper church, an essential part of a community who used it, contributed towards its upkeep and were proud of it. Why then, did St. Luke cling to St. Chad’s? Did he imagine that God was more likely to be found here, in this ancient, unloved place, on these uneven, stone-flagged floors, inside these stained and flaking walls with their poor, bowed, leaded-windows, under this worm-infested, leaking roof? Or was St. Luke, as some people maintained, slightly mad?

  “Would you like me to give you lunch?” It was not a pressing invitation and I would have refused, but Francesca, having shifted lessons and arranged for local help to attend to the mid-day feeding in order to visit her father, was not to be despatched after a five-minute audience. “Lunch would be very nice,” she said firmly.

  Reluctantly St. Luke led us outside. In the churchyard, amidst the crumbling headstones, the tumbled vases spilling blackened remains of dahlias and chrysanthemums, treading the long, bleached winter grasses that had never felt the blade of a scythe, St. Luke tapped the restoration appeal barometer in an encouraging manner, as if it might be persuaded to rise a hundred pounds on its own account. The target was forty thousand pounds but the mercury, represented by a rising red line, stopped at four thousand seven hundred and sixty-two. It was a long way short, scarcely more than one-tenth of the total required, but for a church without a congregation, it seemed to me a surprisingly large amount.

  “Forty thousand pounds is a colossal sum of money,” Francesca said in a disparaging voice, “you’ll never raise it.”

  “But I shall try,” said St. Luke, “and I am not alone; help may well be forthcoming from the Department of the Environment and the Country Churches Trust.”

  “If the diocese agree to it,” Francesca reminded him.

  “When the diocese agree to it,” St. Luke waded off through the grass towards the little path which gave access to the rear of the vicarage. He had less hair than I remembered and his threadbare trousers were soaked to the knee. His tweed jacket I recognised as one given by a parishioner who, fearing the worst on hearing he had cancer, had prematurely distributed his personal effects around the neighbourhood and subsequently recovered. Many times S
t. Luke had tried to return it but without success.

  “Why doesn’t somebody convince him that it’s hopeless?” Francesca muttered as we followed him along the narrow, pitted path. “Even if he does manage to raise the money, to force the diocese to agree to get the grants he hopes for. Even if he puts on a new roof, treats the timbers and brings in electricity, will anyone come even then? Does anyone else really care?”

  “I really don’t know,” I said. But I do know, I thought, that in some ways you are truly your father’s daughter, plodding round your waterlogged acres, struggling against every kind of opposition to run your own business with no hope of advancement or prosperity, and every chance of eviction. Only Oliver has prospered, I thought, and now we are all three of us estranged. We are the hopeless dregs of a family, because the end of a family was what we were. St. Luke was both uncle and Guardian to Oliver and me. We had been deposited upon him when we were too young to know it, and when he was already a widower with an infant daughter of his own. He could not have welcomed it, but it seems there was little he could do. Our father, who had fancied himself as a poet but not as a parent, and had miserably failed to provide for his wife and family, walked out of our rented home one morning without so much as a word of explanation or farewell and never returned. Our mother, St. Luke’s only sister, travelled extensively in search of him until every source of money failed, but he was never heard of again. When there was no money to travel, she walked locally, endlessly, becoming increasingly exhausted, odd and depressed, until one day she was discovered floating face downwards along a peaceful stretch of the river by a petrified angler. Our family history was not something I cared to dwell on, but we had had each other, Oliver, Francesca and I, and our childhood at the vicarage, looked after by a succession of daily helps, had been happy enough.