Rocking Horse Hill

by Cathryn Hein

  Josh had half-dragged, half-carried Digby to firmer ground before climbing back down for Felicity, but as soon as he began to scoop soil from above her body, the wall of dirt and rock shifted again. More weedy clods broke away. Small avalanches of earth cascaded either side of him. He waited until they steadied, and began again, only to set off a larger slide that swept Felicity’s arm away and, if not for a last-second lunge to the side, would have taken him with it.

  The realisation of how close Em had come to the same fate didn’t sink in until later, when he’d climbed back from the quarry and found her near an ambulance, her arm in a sling and Muffy at her feet, waiting, as they all were, for news of Felicity.

  ‘They found her,’ he said.

  She regarded him with pitiful hope then looked away, her expression almost unbearable to witness. She swallowed and spoke, her voice hoarse. ‘Thank you.’

  ‘For what?’

  ‘For pulling me back.’

  He crouched down and took her hand, careful not to bump her damaged shoulder. ‘I’d never have let you fall.’ He held her gaze, ready to tell her what he should have weeks ago. For the second time in his life Josh had almost lost her. There would be no third time. He’d make sure of that now. Except she’d begun to cry and the paramedics had arrived back, along with the other emergency services, and the moment was lost.

  His mum squeezed his fingers, bringing him back. ‘Go on with you now.’

  Smiling, Josh bent down to kiss her cheek. ‘Don’t wait up for me.’

  She laughed, a sound that warmed him and brought his anticipation back to life. ‘Believe me, Joshy, my sweet, we had no plans of doing that.’

  Twenty-Eight

  Em rested on the top of the porch step and gazed across her bedraggled garden. After their beachside holiday, the chooks appeared happy to be home, clucking and scratching contentedly around the tangled mess of plants, tearing up any surviving seedlings with sharp claws and beaks as they searched for grubs. Chelsea was even more delighted. Jasmine’s windswept stone and sand garden held little joy for a water-loving duck.

  Em didn’t mind the damage. In a few days she’d sort it out: dig out the wasted winter vegetables and toss them on the compost and replace them with spring and summer seedlings. She smiled. In a few days it’d be Monday. How easy it was to forget that she needed to go back to work, reopen the shop, somehow make up for the losses of profit and goodwill over the last five weeks.

  She wrapped her arm around Muffy and hugged her. ‘Next weekend then, hey, Muff-Muff.’

  The mug of tea she’d brought out was long emptied but Em stayed studying the garden, wallowing in being home. Camrick had felt like an exile, and perhaps a little cowardly. But with the media camped on their doorstep in the aftermath of the quarry’s collapse and with so much for their family to come to terms with in the weeks following, it proved necessary. The time away had given her some perspective. A chance to reconcile what her beloved hill had done.

  And, more importantly, what she had done.

  She turned to look at the great maw left by the quarry’s subsidence. The old greying scar had been replaced with an almost blood-dark fresh mark. Around the rim of the collapsed edge, emergency stabilisers had been hammered in place, an ugly substitute for what plants and trees would have done over time. A furore over the area’s management had erupted, with competing interests blaming each other. All it had achieved was to fill the letters-to-the-editor sections of newspapers with vitriol, along with news websites and social media.

  From her balcony at Camrick, Granny B had peered south, smoked her cigars and harrumphed over it all.

  Em spent her time very differently.

  For a long while she blamed herself, until Samuel sat with her one day as she worked on The Ballad of the White Horse in the kitchen and talked about human fallibility. How easy it was for the tiny decisions to cause tragedy. How they built against one another, until it took only a small flick or careless touch to send them scattering like dominoes.

  Such had been the case with his son. His whingeing dismissed as merely that of a boy hankering for a day off from school. Missed symptoms, a misdiagnosis of flu. Overworked emergency staff. And suddenly a child was in a coma, never to recover.

  ‘But what I did. . .’ Hot tears built as Em remembered the email she’d sent, the almost triumphant way she’d crushed Felicity’s dream. ‘It wasn’t an accident. I did it deliberately, with malice.’

  ‘Not completely,’ Samuel had replied. ‘You sent that email because you loved your brother and feared for your family.’

  It was a tragedy towards which they’d all contributed, but blame also lay with Felicity herself. She who’d locked Granny B out. She who’d seen all Em had at Rocking Horse Hill and coveted it for herself, urging Digby to break the promise he’d made his sister and reclaim Rocking Horse Hill for her, causing arguments and the germination of distrust. She who’d seen what the Wallace name meant, its history and cachet, and misinterpreted it as a kind of power. Power that she’d never had, that could transform her from worthless to worthwhile.

  That idea was the saddest for Em to absorb. Felicity didn’t need the hill or a new name or anything else to stop being nothing. She had Digby, who loved her, and that made her infinitely precious.

  Muffy rose, her nose lifted, sniffing and listening. Em listened too, her stomach fluttering as the sound increased. She let Muffy go, watching her closely as the dog trotted the path to the side of the house.

  The engine decelerated, a gear was changed. The flutters turned into wingbeats. Em formed her hands into a steeple and pressed the edges against her mouth. The car accelerated out of a corner, travelled on, and then slowed.

  Muffy’s tail began to wag.

  Em remained seated on the porch step. Casual, that’s how she wanted this. Softly, softly with their damaged hearts.

  Muffy ran ahead of Josh like a puppy, halting to look up at him with her big happy-dog grin while he caught up, then twirling in excited circles before running off again. Em wanted to do the same: run to him and wrap herself around that strong body, but the fear that he’d stand stiff and unresponsive held her back. She hadn’t even been sure he’d come.

  He stopped near the corner, where the path turned towards the porch steps. ‘Hey.’

  ‘Hey yourself.’

  His delicious treacle eyes raked her body before returning to rest, intense, on hers. ‘You look good, Em.’

  ‘So do you.’

  He did. A pair of faded jeans, his broad shoulders accentuated by a blue-and-white checked shirt, the sleeves rolled up to expose his strong forearms. But it was his face she couldn’t stop looking at. His beautiful, masculine face.

  God, she loved him.

  He scratched at his beard and studied the garden for a moment before swinging back. ‘You sent a text.’

  She placed her hand on the space beside her. ‘Come sit with me?’

  He assessed her for a moment then approached and eased down, the porch timbers creaking mildly under his weight. His body beside hers felt like security.

  The hill’s new wound drew his gaze as it had hers. ‘I have nightmares about it sometimes.’ He refocused on Em. ‘I dream that no matter how hard I grip, you keep slipping away. That it’s your arm I see reaching out of the dirt. Makes me wake up crazy.’

  ‘I’m sorry.’

  He shook his head. ‘Not your fault.’ He squinted at the sky. ‘Anyway, I’m the one who’s sorry. For saying what I did. I should have stayed. Talked it out. By leaving. . .’ Josh held up his hand and dropped it. ‘I should have been here.’

  ‘None of us owns a crystal ball, Josh.’

  ‘Maybe not, but I knew she was dangerous. I knew it from the start, the way she watched you.’ He looked at his boots. ‘I let you down, Em. I don’t know how I’m supposed to come back from that.’

  ‘There’s nothing to come back from.’ She placed her hand on the porch rail. ‘Stay here. I won’t be long.’ Seconds
later Em was back. She settled down at his side and balanced the cloth-wrapped parcel on her knees, her hands flat on top. ‘I’ve had plenty of time to think lately. About a lot of things.’ She smiled at him. ‘I also had a lot of time to work. This is for you.’ Love and hope in her gaze, she passed him the parcel. ‘I thought it only fitting that the star should have his own copy.’

  Josh stared at it, uncertainty furrowing his brow, then he began to unfold the cloth.

  The book was bound in fine dark leather, with a patina that made it seem smudged with age. Running across the cover’s middle third was the title and author, the letters stamped and then painted in gold.

  The Ballad of the White Horse by G.K. Chesterton.

  He opened the cover as though it were a precious manuscript, and stilled when he saw Em’s painting of the king. In daylight, Alfred appeared more alive than ever. His cape billowed as though windswept, the ancestral jewel holding it in place glittering, as if she’d painted it with real quartz dust. His armour shone under a sky as blue and real as that which shone over Rocking Horse Hill. The king was mesmerising, proud, a warrior and saviour, and regarded the world with Josh’s eyes.

  He swallowed and tilted his head back, breathing hard. ‘You were working on it all the time.’

  The show of emotion left Em mystified. ‘Of course.’

  ‘I thought you’d abandoned it. I thought. . .’ He regarded the illumination once more and traced his finger over the king’s armour, before looking at her. ‘Thank you.’

  ‘You’re very welcome.’ She held her breath, willing him to turn the page. There was more, so much more, but Josh kept holding her gaze, the way he always used to, as though if he tried hard enough he could peel away her skin and see into the heart inside. He didn’t need to try; all he needed to do was turn the page.

  Finally, he turned back to the book. Em’s world seemed to still as his fingers slipped under the parchment corner. Slowly, the page lifted and dropped, revealing a blank sheet. Blank except for an ink inscription penned in Em’s normal handwriting.

  To Josh,

  Thank you for taking my hand.

  I love you,

  Em.

  Josh kept his head bowed and his eyes closed for an uncomfortable period of time. Muffy sat on her haunches, panting in the warmth. Sensing Em’s anxiety, she moved closer, Em reaching out for her at the same time as Josh spoke.

  ‘Come here.’ He cupped her face and held it, then his mouth curved and Em’s heart flew skyward. ‘Remind me to never doubt my mum again.’

  She laughed, but it was brief, the sound smothered by a kiss that blanked her mind to everything but Josh.

  When they finally pulled apart, Em felt lightheaded and breathless. Muffy was on her belly with her head on her paws and a resigned expression on her sweet face. The chooks were still scratching, Chelsea was waddling her way through a messy row of beans, oblivious to the drama on the porch, while in front of them all the hill stretched into the sky.

  Josh took her hand and tangled his fingers in hers. He smiled at her, eyes shining. ‘This time I’m never letting go.’

  Em smiled lazily as Josh kissed his way across her collarbone before nuzzling into her neck. Sleep had done nothing to diminish the way she felt. She was full of him, his scent, his taste, his touch, his breath.

  His love.

  And yet neither of them had said it out loud. Em supposed they didn’t need to. Their feelings vibrated everywhere, like some skittish electric force.

  ‘I missed waking up next to you,’ he said, curling his arm around her belly, a smile in his voice. ‘You’re all warm and soft.’ He stroked the skin under her breast with his thumb, the caress shooting a trill through her groin. ‘And sexy.’

  ‘You could wake up here all the time. If you wanted.’

  She breathed in as he shifted onto his elbow and studied her face. ‘Are you asking me to move in?’

  Was she? The offer wasn’t planned. It just came out, a half-­distracted verbalisation of the want she’d felt. The want for this to be more than what it was before, more than sex, more than the resurrection of a past long gone.

  ‘It seems I am.’

  ‘I don’t know. I was kind of getting used to my old single bed.’ Josh broke into a grin. ‘I had lots of good dreams in that bed.’

  ‘I bet you did.’

  ‘Yeah, and they were all about you.’ He rolled and pressed his forehead against hers, a cheeky sparkle in his gaze. ‘Emily Wallace-Jones, offering to live in sin with a bloke from the east side. What would your grandmother say?’

  ‘Knowing my gran,’ said Em dryly, ‘she’d probably tell us to hurry up and breed.’

  He laughed. ‘I’m not so sure about this breeding business yet but I’m more than happy to practise.’

  A sentiment Em could only agree with.

  Later, after they’d made love and lain drowsy and content in each other’s arms, Josh once again kissed his way up her neck. ‘My turn for presents and your turn to stay put,’ he said when he’d reached her mouth and teased her lips. He slid out of bed and began to drag on clothes. ‘And no peeking out the window.’

  Amused, Em flopped back, listening to the movement of the house. The contentment of having Josh back in her life, the smug joy of knowing he was staying.

  She could hear movement outside. A hushed expletive, followed by a growled ‘out the way’. The back door slid open, Muffy’s toenails clicking on the slate as she trotted inside. Josh’s footsteps followed, heavier than normal. There was a strange rolling noise, then quiet followed by Josh’s approach up the hall.

  He kneeled on the bed and kissed her. ‘You can get up now.’

  Em tugged on clothes, anticipation fizzing inside her. Josh waited at the door with Muffy at his feet, watching her with a satisfied smile.

  At the door he took her hand. ‘Close your eyes.’

  ‘What are you up to?’

  ‘Something special.’

  With her eyes closed, the house felt familiar and strange at the same time. For a fanciful moment in the hall, Em thought she heard breathing before realising it was only her own excited breath. The slate was cold under her feet, then warm as she passed in front of the fire, heat still radiating from the previous night’s coals. Though spring had at last brought bright skies and sunshine to the hill, the nights remained fresh and occasionally frosty.

  Josh took her shoulders and directed her sideways. She shuffled, relieved when she felt the thick pile of her favourite shaggy rug.

  ‘You can open your eyes now.’

  In front of the window, lit by the sun as it topped Rocking Horse Hill, the timber lustrous with polish, was the easel. Em reached out and ran her fingertips reverently over the main board, feeling its finish, the slide of the timber. Her touch dropped to the lip and skated across to the flat desk, running in and out of the inkwell hollows. The craftsmanship was superb. Beautiful, tight-fitting joints, rounded edges of silky smoothness.

  She turned to Josh. His back was to the window, the sun creating a halo around his head as he watched her. And Em remembered another time, a moonlit man who’d gazed at her with passion that went deeper than physical want.

  ‘I love you.’

  His mouth curled. ‘I take it that means you like it.’

  ‘I do. It’s perfect.’

  ‘Good. Now come here.’ He wrapped her to him, arms enveloping, protective, possessive. ‘I’m not without faults, Em. I’ve got plenty, but one thing I promise. There will never be any fault in my love for you. Never.’

  The wheelbarrow’s rusty front wheel squealed all the way down the slope from the shed to the road. Josh wanted to fix it, but Em had already loaded it with the cypress sapling, spade and organic fertiliser, and knowing Josh’s perfectionist nature when it came to handyman work, he’d take forever.

  ‘Here, muscle man,’ said Em, passing him the spade, ‘show me how good you are.’

  Josh grinned. ‘Want me to take my shirt off? Give you
a perve like in that TV ad?’

  ‘You’re forgetting I’ve seen your chest before. Many times.’

  He tutted. ‘A couple of months in and you’re jaded already.’

  Em crossed her arms and arched an eyebrow. She’d proved perfectly well only an hour before how unjaded she was. Practising breeding was what they’d come to call it – a secret nod to Granny B. One day soon they’d be doing it for real.

  It felt fitting for Josh to be the one helping plant the new cypress. He may not be a war hero, a Second Lieutenant at eternal rest, but he’d saved her life. Without his determined grip Em could have been lost with Felicity, swallowed up by the place she’d loved since childhood. He’d also filled another void, that in her heart, and now he was helping to fill this one.

  She watched the thread of Josh’s muscles as they moved under his T-shirt, grateful once more for the luck that had brought him back into her life, and for the love that now kept him there. Life wasn’t entirely without complications. The media never seemed to leave off in its tricks to get them to talk. Women’s magazines were the big ones now, spying a circulation winner in their love story, and both she and Josh had faced down customers who’d turned out to be anything but.

  Love cocooned them, a luxury poor Digby didn’t have.

  Blinking the sting in her eyes away, Em crossed her arms and turned to regard the hill. Her relationship with Digby had changed irrevocably. The closeness they’d shared had been destroyed the first day Felicity came to the hill, when Digby was left torn between the love he’d discovered and the promise he’d made his sister. What had been done could not be undone and now guilt at their actions kept them both restrained.

  Digby hadn’t set foot at Rocking Horse Hill since that night and she doubted he ever would again. Two weeks ago, without telling anyone his plan, Digby signed the property over to her.

  Granny B had raised a toast at the news. Adrienne bowed her head and apologised yet again for her failings as a mother. No matter how many times Samuel and Em tried to comfort her, she bore Felicity’s death and Digby’s grief as her cross. She should have done more to make Felicity feel welcome, to make her feel secure. At least the days of deadening her culpability with wine were over. Samuel moving in had halted that. Such a pity he couldn’t work the same magic on Granny B’s vices.