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  Mac was going to drive his car to the park of the Manor house.

  ‘If you’d only learn to ride,’ Dora said, ‘you could come with us.’

  ‘I’d be too scared.’

  ‘You could ride Willy. Anyone can ride a mule.’

  ‘Except me.’

  He followed them slowly in the car along the switchback road at the top of the hill, past the racecourse where some men were staking out enclosures for the point-to-point meeting, and then he went ahead to open the cattle hurdles across the Manor drive so that they could ride in the park.

  Because he was watching, Dora showed off a bit with David: slow canters and figure-of-eights with a flying change of lead, turns on the forehand and what she thought was a turn on the quarters. David was well schooled, but he needed a lot of leg and a lot of flexible collection. His figure-of-eights were fast and wide and he was not always on the right lead, but Mac would not know that.

  ‘You see?’ Dora pulled the grey horse up in front of Mac. ‘It’s easy. Isn’t he a great horse?’

  ‘Except that he don’t always change leads in back as well as in front.’

  ‘How do you know?’ He wasn’t supposed to have seen that. ‘I thought you didn’t know anything about riding.’

  ‘Oh, I don’t.’ Mac had his head under Toby’s saddle flap, tightening the girth. ‘I guess I read it in a book. I read where it said you should use a lot more outside leg.’

  ‘Well, you read it wrong.’ Dora pulled David round. Steve was always telling her she did not use enough leg, but she was not going to hear it from Mac, who didn’t know what he was talking about.

  She took Toby down to the bottom slope of the park where the terrible fence stuck out above the brambled undergrowth, a ditch on the take off, a drop on the other side into the road.

  The leader of the Night Riders, trying to escape capture, had ridden Cobby at this impossible jump, not caring if he impaled the pony on the rusty spikes.

  Toby and Mac looked at the wicked fence with reverence.

  ‘I could jump that, I bet,’ Toby swaggered, but without conviction.

  Mac said, ‘You’d be crazy to try.’

  They went back through the gate to the other side of the fence, where Cobby’s rider had fallen and been caught unconscious, with the side of his face split open.

  ‘On that very patch of stones,’ Dora said. ‘If you look, you can probably still find some teeth.’

  Toby got off immediately to look. They let him search for a few minutes, scrabbling among the stones like a miniature grave robber, but it was getting late, so Mac lifted him on to the pony and they went home.

  After seeing the jump, which had become a famous legend and was known among local people as Cobbler’s Leap, Toby was prouder of the pony than ever. Dora let him unsaddle him and feed him by himself, and he stayed in the loose box, brushing and fussing and trying to whistle through his teeth like Slugger, while Dora and Mac finished the other horses. When Dora looked over the door, Cobby was still eating.

  ‘How much did you give him? He should be done by now.’

  ‘Just a tiny bit extra.’ Toby measured a small gap with the thumb and finger of his bird-like hand. ‘Because he was so good.’ At home, Toby did not get enough to eat, so to him, feeding was loving.

  ‘Not too much, I hope.’ Dora did not go in to check. Toby raised his arms and she lifted him easily over the half-door and carried him out to the car because he was tired.

  Cobby went on eating.

  Chapter 17

  WHEN THEY CAME back from the cottage, Dora felt she had to ask Mac, ‘Do you want to come up to the house?’ It seemed odd for her to be alone there with all the food, and Mac alone in his little room with perhaps bread and cheese, which was sometimes all he had.

  ‘Uh-huh,’ he said, and she wished she hadn’t asked him. ‘I’m going to have a drink and go to bed. I’m bushed. You want a shot of Scotch?’

  Dora said, ‘No, I hate it,’ and felt childish. It would have been more sophisticated to try and drink it.

  Her mother had always insisted, ‘Have a glass of wine. Learn to drink at home.’ Last time Dora went home, her father gave her a glass of water that turned out to be vodka. Dora had been sick.

  She went to bed early too, and saw Mac’s light go out as she passed the staircase window.

  She was woken out of her first deep sleep by a noise from the stables. Banging and thumping, hooves against wood. She sat up. Better go out. What was the good of Mac sleeping out there if he never heard the horses? Poor old Lancelot would have sat all night in the ruins of his manger before Mac woke.

  Dora pulled a sweater over her pyjamas and trod into her frayed gym shoes. When she ran out of the back door and down the path, she saw that the lights were on in one block of the stables.

  Mac was in Cobby’s corner box. The pony was down and groaning, swinging his head about, kicking out at the wall.

  ‘Colic.’ Dora went quickly inside.

  ‘Yeah. We’ve got to get him up.’ Mac had a halter on the pony and was tugging at his head. ‘Come on, boy – hup, hup! Come on – get up there! Here Dora, you pull this end, I’ll try and heave behind.’

  They struggled, pushing and pulling, but the distressed pony was as heavy as the great brewery horse.

  ‘I thought you never woke,’ Dora panted.

  ‘Couldn’t sleep. My past catching up on me. Good thing. If this jughead don’t get up, he’ll twist his gut and we’ll lose him. Try the broom.’

  Without questioning why Mac seemed all of a sudden to know what to do, Dora ran for a broom and poked Cobby in the side with the bristle end, trying to shift him. The pony groaned and swung his head round, bumping his nose against his distended stomach.

  ‘Yes, I know,’ Dora gasped. ‘I know what’s wrong.’ She jabbed hard and the pony snapped at the broom, drawing back his nose from his bared teeth. ‘If anything happens to you, Steve will – oh Cobby, get up!’

  ‘Move over.’ Mac pulled back his foot to kick the pony in the ribs.

  ‘No!’ Dora kicked Mac herself. ‘Don’t you know his stomach is full of gas? Don’t you know anything?’

  ‘Not much,’ Mac said mildly. He went out of the box.

  All right, she had kicked him. He wasn’t much use anyway. She went on tugging at the rope in a hopeless kind of frenzy. Cobby would die. Steve would come back and Dora would tell him about Toby and the feed. Her fault, her fault. She began to scream at the pony, half sobbing.

  ‘Here, let’s try something else in his ear besides yelling.’

  Mac was in the box, crouching in the straw beside Cobby’s head, which was held out rigid, his jaw set against the tug of the halter rope.

  ‘Hold him like that – tight.’ Mac had a tin mug in his hand. He caught hold of Cobby’s ear and quickly poured something into it. In a moment, Cobby was up, struggling and staggering, tossing his head and agitating his ear, furious, distressed, distended – but standing up.

  ‘Warm coffee.’ Mac emptied the mug into the bedding. ‘Learned that from an old horse thief out in Nevada.’

  For the rest of the night, they took turns walking Cobby in the yard. He was no better. They had to keep him moving. When Dora telephoned the vet, his wife said he was out with a foaling mare. He would come as soon as he could. No idea how long.

  They had tried everything. Colic drench. Liquid paraffin. Huge dose of aspirin in Coca Cola, most of which went down Dora’s sleeves as she held up the pony’s head. When he would not walk, she went behind him with a broom. He was still in pain, nipping, cow kicking, swinging his head about like a club. He would lie down if they let him.

  ‘Will he die?’ Dora had accepted that Mac really did know what he was doing.

  ‘Maybe.’

  ‘We can’t – oh Mac, do something!’

  ‘Try one more thing.’ He gave her the rope and ran across the yard to his room. When he came out, he had one of his flat pint bottles of whisky wrapped round with stick
ing plaster.

  ‘Hang on to him. Don’t want to lose any of this.’ They backed Cobby into a corner, Dora got hold of his tongue, and Mac poured all the whisky down his throat.

  Chapter 18

  WHEN STEVE CAME back, Cobby was his old self. The whisky had begun to shift the painful blockage in his intestines almost at once.

  ‘Mac saved his life.’ Dora said. ‘Why did he pretend to know nothing about horses?’

  ‘Perhaps he was a groom, and got sacked for drinking.’

  After the heroic night, Dora tried to get the lonely man to talk to her.

  ‘If you can talk about things, they aren’t half so bad,’ she said.

  ‘They aren’t bad,’ Mac said. ‘Go away Dora, there’s a good kid, and leave me alone.’

  ‘At least come for a ride. Do you good. I don’t believe any more that you can’t ride.’

  ‘I don’t want good done to me. I want to be let alone.’

  ‘I came to see if you wanted to go to the cinema.’

  ‘You joking?’

  ‘Why?’

  ‘I already told you. I hate the movies.’

  ‘There’s an old Cosmo Spence film on. He’s good.’

  ‘Big deal.’

  Dora went to the cinema with Callie and they sat through a rather dated film made several years ago, about a Centurion of ancient Rome who rode thousands of miles bareback, looking for his girl friend who was carried off by barbarian hordes. As usual in a Cosmo Spence film, the horse part was the best. He rode a big creamy Arab and performed incredible feats of horsemanship.

  ‘He does all the riding,’ Callie whispered to Dora in the dark. ‘No stunt man.’

  ‘How do you know?’

  ‘I read it in a magazine. That’s how he got famous. After all, he’s not that good at acting. You don’t need to be if you look like that, the magazine said.’

  ‘You don’t need to be if you can ride like that.’ Dora watched the screen enviously.

  The last point-to-point of the season was late this year, because there had been epidemics of coughing in several stables.

  Part of the course was over Mr Beckett’s land. He went wild if one of the Colonel’s horses was on his property, but the races were different. He got paid, and they didn’t go over his vegetables or his seedling fir trees.

  At one point, the course ran past the Farm’s bottom pasture. You could sit on the fence and get a grandstand view of the horses coming over the brushwood jump at the top of the hill, galloping down to make the turn at the flag, then slowing through the plough to the stone wall, and on to the turf again and out of sight behind the wood. After the second time round, you could run up the hill, through the hedges where the first two jumps were, and into the crowd along the main part of the course to see the finish.

  It rained all day. It always did. This course was known as The Bog. But everyone at the Farm went to the races, except Mac, who had begun to drive off somewhere in his free time instead of staying in his room and sleeping.

  He had been gone every afternoon last week. They thought he had a girl friend, but no one knew who or where, and no one asked him.

  After the second race, Callie and the Colonel stayed at the top of the hill to see the next lot of horses come into the paddock. None of them were special, except a big bay who walked with his groom as if he owned the ring of turf, catching at his snaffle, tail swinging, splendid muscles moving under his shining hide.

  ‘That horse of Dixon’s looks well.’ the Colonel said. ‘I think I’ll put something on him.’

  ‘Don’t waste your money, Brigadier.’

  He turned and saw smiling Sidney Hammond at his elbow, all his teeth on show, a sporty black and white check cap pulled over one eye to make him look like a shrewd judge of horse-flesh.

  ‘That liver chestnut there. That’s the one.’

  ‘That weed? It couldn’t run water.’

  ‘Make no mistake, Brigadier.’ Mr Hammond winked with the eye that was not covered by the check cap. ‘You’ve got to know the inside story on these nags.’

  ‘I do, with a lot of them,’ the Colonel started to say, but Mr Hammond had taken his race card and was marking horses in other races that ‘couldn’t lose’.

  To get away from him, they left before the jockeys came into the paddock. As they went towards the line of bookies under their dripping coloured umbrellas, Callie said, ‘If he did know anything, he’d give you all the duds.’

  ‘He seems friendly enough.’

  ‘Make no mistake, Brigadier.’ Callie looked up at him and winked. ‘He’d put you out of business, if he could. The Louse said so, and I believe it.’

  They went back to the pasture fence and watched the big field of horses come over the thick brush fence in a bunch, riders leaning back for the drop on the slope of the hill.

  Blue with white cross, red and yellow spots, orange with green sleeves and cap. The colourful thunder of them was gone too quickly, crowding round the flag and spattering away through the sticky plough.

  ‘Dixon’s horse is going well.’ The Colonel had his field glasses up. ‘Anyone else have anything on him?’

  No one answered. They were all staring after the horses.

  ‘I said, “Anyone—”.’ The horses disappeared over the wall and behind the wood. The Colonel lowered his glasses and looked round. ‘What’s the matter?’

  ‘Didn’t you see?’ Callie spoke at last. ‘That man on the weedy liver chestnut, with the gold jacket and blue cap?’

  ‘It fell back there, through the plough. I knew in the paddock, it—’

  ‘But didn’t you see? It was Mac.’

  When the field came round the second time, Mac was far behind, the liver chestnut black with sweat, nostrils wide and scarlet. It heaved itself through the brush rather than jumped, landed with its head low, and was held together cleverly by Mac’s hands and balance.

  When he got to the plough, he pulled up and turned the horse. He rode slowly back, reins loose, slumped in the tiny racing saddle in the gold jacket that was too tight for him, the blue silk-covered helmet clamping down his thick hair, the chin strap round his beard. He looked more like a trick motor-cyclist than a jockey.

  ‘Hi there,’ he said, as he came nearer.

  ‘Good race,’ the Colonel said politely, ‘as far as it went.’

  ‘He’s not half fit, but this friend of mine had a good sale for him if he ran well. Broke his collar bone last week and couldn’t ride, so he asked me to help out. Some help.’

  ‘He’s not a stayer,’ the Colonel said, ‘but you got him farther than most people could.’

  Mac laughed. ‘I was practically carrying him.’

  They were having an ordinary horsey conversation as if nothing strange had happened.

  With his tacky old raincoat over his muddy borrowed silks and boots, Mac came up to the house for a long hot bath. He stayed for supper, but left before the end of the meal. He did not say any more about the race, and no one asked him, although they were bursting with the need to ask him many things.

  When he had gone, the Colonel said, ‘You know, he does look slightly familiar, under all that face foliage. He rides like an old hand. Perhaps he’s a trainer, who got ruled off for dope or something.’

  ‘I think he’s had some tragedy,’ Anna said, ‘and has come here to forget.’

  ‘Perhaps he’s a murderer,’ Dora suggested.

  ‘A spy,’ said Steve, and Callie said, ‘Perhaps he fell out of a train and lost his memory.’

  Mac did his work. What difference did it make?

  Except that now that they knew he could ride, he started to ride David. He worked with him every day, schooling him in the jump field, while Dora and Callie and Steve watched and marvelled at what he could do with the grey horse.

  ‘It will add a hundred pounds to his price.’ The Colonel was delighted. ‘I’m glad I waited to sell him.’ Though he would have sold David long ago if Steve and Dora had let him. ‘I’m going t
o start talking about him to some of the dressage people. We should get a really good price for him.’

  ‘Couldn’t we possibly …’ Mac was giving Dora some lessons and David was beginning to go well for her too.

  ‘I need the money,’ the Colonel said, ‘for these other horses who need us.’

  ‘… just for the summer?’

  ‘The barn roof has got to be repaired. I can’t afford to keep him.’

  Chapter 19

  THE COLONEL WAS always hard up. The Home of Rest for Horses was run mostly on gifts of money. Even the people who paid something to keep their old horses here did not pay enough. Sidney Hammond had not paid a penny for Miss America, who was still at the Farm and growing quite fat and leisurely on a life of good grass and no work, a big welt of scar tissue still disfiguring her back.

  The price of feed and hay and bedding went up every year. Repairs were expensive. All the gutters needed replacing; they dripped rivulets down hairy old heads stuck out into the rain. The new barn roof would cost far more than the sale of David would bring.

  The Colonel would soon have to talk to the Finance Committee. He hated to do that as much as they hated having to hear him.

  And so when the continuity girl walked into the yard one day and asked the Colonel if he would ride in the Battle of Marston Moor for a historical film they were shooting locally, the Colonel could have cried, because of the money she offered.

  He laughed instead. ‘Me? Ride down the side of a gravel pit and jump a stream with a wounded man across my saddle? Good God, no. It would kill me.’

  ‘But I heard you were the finest rider round here. Olympic team and all that.’

  ‘Oh, I could ride a bit in my day.’ The Colonel screwed up the side of his face, as he did when he was embarrassed into modesty. ‘But that’s long gone. Damn knee’s too stiff. Look at it.’ He bent his lame leg as far as it would go. ‘Not much more movement in it than that boy.’ He nodded at Steve on his crutches, playing hopscotch in the yard with Callie.

  The plaster cast was slightly bent at the knee, so that he could sit. He had found that he could sit on Cobbler’s Dream, with the plaster leg stuck out with no stirrup. Since the London specialist had said that he thought it would mend without another operation, Steve was taking more chances with it.