“We will come and visit you very soon,” I promised, “we are very busy at the moment because of the school holidays, but we have not forgotten you. We will be in touch.”
“But of course you will. You dear girls,” said St. Luke.
TWENTY-ONE
I did as I was told. For the next two days, I stayed away, although it was unbearably painful to do so, but I could not stay away from the funeral. John Englehart had done a terrible thing, but it had been done out of the unspeakable misery of the abandoned, without any real thought of the consequences to others, I felt sure of that. I had known him well enough to realise that Oliver’s heartless dismissal would have been unendurable for him, and as for the letters, well, they had been his only solace, his imaginary affair. They had been composed out of desperation, not spite, and I preferred to think that he had scattered them in order to be certain that Oliver would find at least some of them, so that he should know how he felt. I felt nothing but pity for him.
Oliver attended the funeral, and appropriately, it rained, although the day before had been cloudless, and there had been no hint, no forecast of rain. Two caballerizos flanked him at the service and at the graveside, the dark heads protecting the golden one. A wreath in the shape of a horse in passage lay amongst the floral tributes.
As the family stood, stone-faced with grief, over the rain-splattered coffin, we walked slowly away, across the wet, slippery grass.
“You know what they are saying about me?” he said.
“Yes,” I said, “I know what they are saying. “I have read the newspapers.”
As usual, the horse press had been the most restrained. Beatings Alleged after Suicide at Top Dressage Establishment had been their headline and letters both supporting and viciously attacking Oliver had appeared in the editorial pages. The popular press had been a different matter, somehow even excerpts from the letters had appeared in print and the caballerizo paid off by the sponsors had not missed the opportunity to double his money.
“And if it were true?” he said.
“Is it true, Oliver?”
“If it were?”
“If it were true,” I said, “I don’t think I would be very surprised.”
He turned away slightly, his eyes on a rain-washed slab set into the grass, its edges fenced with rusting fleur-de-lis.
“You always said what you thought, Kathryn. You never prevaricated.”
The sight of him standing there, his good, navy coat hanging loose about his shoulders, his golden hair wet, suddenly caved in my heart completely.
“Oliver …” I began, and I was going to say, whatever you have done, however you have behaved, it doesn’t matter, you only have to ask, you only have to tell me you need me. I will come with you, wherever you choose to go, but I did not say it because unexpectedly, terrifyingly, he dropped his head into his hands.
“You do know,” he said in an agonised voice, “that they have taken San Domingo.”
I did not know. I could not take it in at first. I could not believe it. I knew the sponsors had not been without sympathy for him, the publicity department had almost been ready to ride out the storm, but the board of directors with due regard to the sensibilities of their shareholders, had been forced to recommend that the sponsorship be withdrawn with the greatest possible speed and the establishment had already been advertised for sale. To remove the sponsorship, to strip Oliver of the trappings that his talent, his fame and his glamour had earned him was terrible – yet somehow, in the light of all that had happened, understandable; but to take away his beloved San Domingo – only I perhaps, fully realised what this would mean to him.
I stood beside him in the bleak churchyard, on turf impregnated with the tears of centuries, and I was helpless with the utter wretchedness of it all. I wanted to throw my arms around his bowed shoulders, to tell him that I loved him still, that I had never stopped loving him, but I no longer knew how. I was afraid to touch him. I was paralysed, useless. He was beyond comfort and I was hopeless with the knowledge that not a single thing I could say or do would bring him relief.
I do not know how long we stood there, but long enough for him to recover his composure, to take a deep, uneven breath, to raise his head, to present me with a face in which there was enough of the Oliver I knew to challenge me to notice that the eyelashes were wet. Then he turned, motioned to the waiting caballerizos to follow him, and walked away.
* * *
When I returned to Pond Cottage several hours later, Francesca was waiting for me in the yard. “Well?” she demanded. “What will he do? Where will he go? Has he decided?”
“I have no idea,” I said, “I didn’t even ask.”
“You didn’t ask?” Francesca stared at me. She was wearing the inevitable begrimed jodhpurs and her anorak with the collar turned up against the rain, but her head was bare, and the curls of hair escaping from her plait dripped beads of water.
“You didn’t ASK?”
I knew it must sound stupid, but Francesca had not been there. She did not realise how impossible it had been.
“I couldn’t ask. I could hardly speak to him. I wish you could have seen,” I said, biting my lip, “how destroyed he was.”
“He must not be destroyed,” Francesca said firmly.
“Oh Francesca,” I leaned against the stable wall, feeling unutterably anguished and exhausted by it all, “how can you possibly say that? You, who have been his eternal critic.”
“That may be true. It is true,” Francesca decided, “but I have been thinking, and I have been looking at the newspapers, and I have come to the conclusion that Oliver has been unjustly treated. He has been infamously slandered. He didn’t kill John Englehart, he isn’t a murderer, and all of these things they accuse him of, none of them are proven.”
“No,” I agreed, “but some of them are true nevertheless.”
“Kathryn, do you want to help Oliver, or not?”
I put my hands up to my face in despair.
“Of course I want to help him! I want to help him more than I have ever wanted anything in the whole of my life! If you really want to know, I would cry and scream to heaven. I would die if I thought it would help him, but I know that it would not. It is all futile. Nothing can help him.”
“Oh yes it can,” Francesca said. The grey-green eyes regarded me in a purposeful manner. “Oh yes it can.”
“What can?” I looked at her in disbelief. “Who can?” Only if the world can be persuaded to slip back in time can Oliver be helped now, I thought, and even Francesca in her present mood of determination, would be hard-pressed to arrange that.
“Tell me first what you think he will do,” she said. “You must have some idea. You know him better than anybody.”
“Untrue,” I said, “But a common mistake.” With the back of my sodden glove I wiped an irritating trickle of rain from my cheek. “I should think he may very well go abroad. It seems to me to be the only thing he can do.”
“Oh no,” she said decidedly, “we must not let him do that.”
“We?” I looked at her questioningly, and with slight exasperation. “Francesca, I don’t think he actually has a choice. I think he has to leave.”
“Going abroad won’t help him,” Francesca said. “I don’t know anything about dressage, but I do know that at the very top, any international sport is very tightly knit. Everyone will know who he is and speculation will sometimes be worse than fact. It will be no easier for him abroad, it will be even more difficult. He will be amongst strangers in a foreign country, he will be lonely. Remember,” she added darkly, “what happened to Oscar Wilde.”
I would have laughed at the comparison if I had the heart for it. “I think I would prefer not to think about Oscar Wilde,” I said.
“Well I think that Oliver should stay,” Francesca declared. “I think he should take everything they can throw at him, I think he should endure it and show them he is not to be defeated, and start again. His reputation may be in sh
reds,” she acknowledged, “but he still has his talent, nobody can take that away from him, nobody can deny that he is the very best.”
It all sounded very fine, very noble, put like that, but:
“How can he start again,” I said despairingly, “what with? Oliver owns nothing, he has nothing. They have even taken San Domingo away from him. He has no horses, no money, and nowhere to go.”
“Oh, but he has,” Francesca said, a note of triumph in her voice, “he can have Moor Park Stables.”
“Moor Park Stables?”
“And why not?” she demanded, “The stables are good, there is land, there is a flat. He can take liveries, give lessons, what more could he want? Why on earth shouldn’t he have Moor Park Stables? Give me one good reason why not?”
“Because you are going to move there,” I said, “because you need them, and you deserve them, that’s why not.”
“That isn’t a good enough reason.”
We stood in the rain, in the appallingly decrepit stable yard, with the mud forming around us again even as we stood, and I looked at Francesca in wonder and disbelief. I did not understand how she could be prepared to forsake all that was promised, the convenience, the order, the comfort, the peace of mind, for the hideous uncertainty, the chaos, the dreadful discomfort of what she had until now so cheerfully endured. I thought there must be some defect in her nature which compelled her away from the easy path, towards one littered with rocks and beset with brambles. It was quite beyond my comprehension. I could not believe that she had thought to consider it. It seemed impossible that she could have suggested it
“You can’t mean it? You couldn’t, you wouldn’t let Oliver have Moor Park Stables, whilst you stayed on here?”
“Oh but I could, you see,” she said, “I can do it easily. And Simon will agree, I’m sure. And if he doesn’t like the idea at first, well,” she lifted her dripping shoulders slightly, “there are always ways and means you know, of persuading people to do things.”
A sentiment with which Oliver might have agreed. I looked at her sharply. She was perfectly resolute.
“I shall do it,” she said. “I am quite determined. Oliver may be a swine and a bastard, he may have done loathsome things, but you have to let me help him now, if I can. You have to allow it.”
“It is not up to me to allow or disallow anything,” I said, “I am just at a loss to understand why you would do it.”
“I would have thought that you would have understood that quite well.”
She turned her head slightly and brushed irritably at the tendrils of hair plastered to her brow. I thought her eyes had filled with tears, but then again, it could have been the rain.
“Do not imagine,” she said, in a stiff little voice, “that you were the only one of us to love Oliver, because there was a time when I loved him more than anybody.”
TWENTY-TWO
We rode to Oliver. There was really no other way. Across country it was not so far, about nine miles. An unexplained, unspoken sense of urgency hastened our progress.
Across Moor Park we cantered, passing the rows of empty loose boxes without a glance, and along the bridleway where we slowed our impatient horses to a trot. Their hooves made hollow, watery sounds on the tarmac. Over the river bridge we trotted, where below us the yellowish water swirled and raced as the surrounding land drained into it. Cutting through another bridleway, where untrimmed hedges snagged at our clothing, we traversed a deep and sticky headland into which the horses sank to their hocks where the plough had claimed every inch. Labouring now, we progressed by means of roads and verges until finally we arrived at the end of the immaculate drive where a cluster of ‘For sale’ notices brutally offended the eye.
In the silent, empty stable yard, not even the ghost of a horse remained. Only the youngest of the caballerizos was to be found, sitting sheltered from the rain beneath the dripping overhang, waiting it seemed, for something, for somebody. He appeared to believe we had come to persuade him to leave and held out his hands, palms foremost, as if he would push us away, although we had not even dismounted from the horses.
“I not leave him,” he said. “I never leave him. Never. I stay here. I wait.” He was perfectly firm, totally adamant.
“Where is he?” Francesca demanded. “We must see him. It’s important.”
He shrugged. “He not tell me. He go walking. He tell me stay here, he come back soon. I wait. I never leave him,” he reiterated, “never.” He sat tight on his bale of straw and looked at us defiantly. He was as immovable as the Rock of Gibraltar.
“Walking?” Francesca looked across at me. “In this weather?”
“He has coat,” the caballerizo assured us, “he has good coat.”
“He has good coat already soaked through,” I said, and was seized by panic. “Francesca, he wouldn’t …”
“I don’t know,” she said. But she had wrenched the chestnut’s steaming head round and was away down the drive at a gallop before I could collect my wits. The roan cob swerved after her, flying along the gravel out of my control. For a moment I was reminded of my first ride on Simpson at Bickerton Show, all those years ago. That ride also, had been for Oliver.
At the end of the drive, Francesca slowed up, unsure of which direction to take. I knew the country. As we crashed out onto the road I led the way to the river. I made first for the bridge, spotted a field leading down to the bank, and set the roan cob galloping alongside the flow. Miles and miles we seemed to ride, plunging through the floods, skirting minor bridges across the lanes, bypassing, sometimes trespassing across private property, scanning the fields for tractor crossings by which to negotiate minor rivulets racing to join the main flow. But we found what we were looking for at last, face downwards in the little watershed before the thundering weir, in front of the grating amidst the accumulated rubbish collected by the river on its never-ending journey: the cans, the bottles, the cartons, the plastic bags, the remnants of things once desired, but soon exhausted and cast away.
Together, we managed to get him out of the water. We laid him carefully on the bank. We straightened and tidied his clothing, smoothed the thin silk shirt, arranged his black tie. We buttoned his good navy coat. Amongst the bobbing refuse, we found his missing shoe and forced it onto his unwilling foot. I combed his golden hair with my fingers as best I could. He was quite cold. By mute and mutual agreement, we made no attempt at resuscitation. It had been his decision, he had always decided for himself, after all, and neither of us would have cared to face him had we succeeded.
I did not weep. He had always detested any display of emotion and this knowledge helped me to hang onto my self-control. Francesca, too, cheated of her great sacrifice, consigned to a life of order and relative comfort, did not weep either.
Only when he was composed to our satisfaction did we call an ambulance. Francesca set out silently on the exhausted chestnut gelding to find a telephone, and I sat on the bank, holding onto the roan cob’s reins to foil his determined efforts to follow, watching the rain collect, like tears, in Oliver’s beautiful blue eyes.
EPILOGUE
I came today, Oliver, to say goodbye. I could not do it yesterday, there were too many people. We did not expect a lot. We thought, things being as they were, it would be a rather quiet affair. We should have known, shouldn’t we, we should have realised you would still draw the crowds, but we were simply overwhelmed by the numbers. The Vicarage and the garden were packed with people, and as usual, we were improvident; we even ran out of teabags. Francesca had to run down to the village shop. Not long afterwards we ran out of food; there was nothing left in the house with which to fill a sandwich, not even a sliver of cucumber. How you would have loathed it. How angry you would have been. We could never do anything to your complete satisfaction, could we Oliver? Well, rest assured that yesterday we failed you again.
One thing we did not run out of was sherry. Boxes and boxes of it were delivered by lorry – we had to put it in the greenhouse
. All of the Tio Fino people came. I expect you find that wry. They have given me San Domingo, they said you had told them I had the potential to make an Olympic standard dressage rider, but I shall not even try. Count Von Der Drehler is going to buy him, and the proceeds will go to buy St. Chad’s a new roof. That way I shall have fulfilled on your behalf, the last of your obligations. I feel you would approve of this, but possibly not of the next part. With the money I have left, I am going into partnership with Sandy Headman. He and I have arranged to sub-let six loose boxes from Francesca at Moor Park. I shall break and school young horses and he will show hunters in the summer, and in the winter we will take hunter liveries. Who knows, sometime in the future I might train a dressage horse of my own.
Yesterday was the most appalling ordeal. We would have liked the service to have been in St. Chad’s, but there would not have been room. As it was, St. Aidan’s was tightly packed, and many more stood outside. Charity Ensdale, and the little caballerizo who waited were both removed from the service. Francesca’s beautiful face was like a stone. St. Luke wept. In all these years I have never seen St. Luke shed a tear, but he wept, quite openly, throughout the service. There were so many tears, Oliver, so many tears. But not from me. I won’t cry for you. I can’t.
This is a bloody, bloody thing that you have done, Oliver. It should never have ended like this, never. I don’t know if you are listening, you never listened before, and now you have the perfect excuse for not hearing, but I honestly do not know how you could have done this to me.
I looked everywhere for your message, for your goodbye. I searched the house, the stables, the car, even the commentary box, for some word, for something to prove you thought of me, of how I might feel. You could have left me something, it would not have taken a minute of your time, but there was nothing. Nothing at all. Francesca was right; you were a bastard.
Flying Changes Page 17
