Grounded Read online

  And she limps off on her endless rounds. I wonder if she ever has any help.

  On the bus back to Belfast Seaneen snuggles into me. She smells of straw and horses under her normal perfume. Maybe she’ll suddenly get horsey and want to move out to the country. I point out all the nice things to her – the views, any cottages that she’d think were cute and anything resembling a baby animal, and she smiles at it all, but I know she sees the country as somewhere to visit on a nice day. She’s all bizz about the grey mare.

  ‘When she took the apple from my hand I nearly cried,’ she says.

  ‘I know.’ I take her hand. ‘I do want her. I just didn’t imagine it happening like this.’

  ‘Sure anybody can just go and buy a horse,’ Seaneen says scornfully. ‘Like that cow Lara. That’s easy. You’d give this horse a brilliant home.’

  I fast forward months – a year – into the future and see myself flying round a course of big jumps, clearing every one perfectly, and all the people hanging around the outside of the ring muttering, ‘He rescued that mare, you know. Brought her on from nothing. They’re going to go right to the top.’

  Never mind the Laras of this world, using Daddy’s money to buy something they can just sit on and point at the jumps. The ghost horse and I will take them on and beat them.

  4.

  It would be OK if it was just me and Seaneen. I even offer to pay for a taxi to the hospital – I wouldn’t expect her to go on the bus, especially as she’s still feeling sick on and off – but Mairéad says she’s never heard anything so ridiculous and she’ll drive us. Only she doesn’t just mean drive us, she means come in with us, see the scan and all.

  ‘You won’t want me if your mum’s there,’ I said when Seaneen phoned the night before to tell me to be ready to be picked up at ten o’clock.

  ‘You mean you don’t want to come?’ She sounded grumpy, which isn’t like Seaneen. Maybe she was nervous as well. ‘It’s your baby too.’

  ‘It’s not your mum’s baby.’

  Silence.

  ‘Seaneen?’

  ‘Look, it’s not much to ask, is it?’

  It’s terrible at the hospital. Everybody treats Seaneen as if she’s about twelve. Not that they aren’t nice to her, but they act like she’s mental or something. And I’m invisible which suits me. Probably because her ma’s hanging around, asking all the questions, acting like she’s best friends with the nurse, holding Seaneen’s hand, even, when they put this cold stuff on her tummy. It’s too weird, seeing Seaneen with her top rolled up, her skin pale and freckly, the wee mole beside her belly button, with her ma standing there. There’s a tiny bump now – not a bump, really; just a bit of a bulge.

  ‘There’s twins in the family,’ Mairéad says to the nurse and I nearly choke.

  Seaneen twists her head and gives me a nervous grin. The nurse moves the scanner thing over Seaneen’s tummy and we all stare at the screen. I know it’s meant to be all special and magical, and maybe it is if you’re thirty or something and you want a baby.

  The nurse smiles and says, ‘Oh look, there we go!’ even though I’m not going anywhere, thanks to this baby. ‘Only one,’ she says. ‘Time enough for twins when you’re older!’ She laughs as if she’s said something dead clever. There’s a shape. An alien bumbling around, all blurry but definitely there.

  ‘Oh my God.’ Seaneen’s eyes go all bright the way they were when she was cuddling the foal. She reaches for my hand as well as her mum’s. ‘Can you believe it? Can you, Declan?’

  I don’t know how to answer so I don’t say anything. This is what’s stopping me going away and having the life I want to have.

  Mairéad squints at the picture. ‘Too early to say what it is, of course,’ she says, like she’s some big expert. ‘But we seem to have the recipe for girls in my family.’

  ‘It’s the father that determines the gender,’ says the nurse, and Mairéad gives me this dirty look, like I’d better get it right.

  The nurse chats to Seaneen about vitamins and morning sickness and the next scan, with Mairéad interrupting every two seconds, and it’s all so female I could scream. Maybe if I’d felt something when I saw the thing move on the screen … but I didn’t. They give Seaneen a couple of pictures of the scan and she looks at them all the way back to the car park.

  Mairéad nearly shites herself turning out of the hospital car park. She hesitates and dithers and misses all these chances while the driver behind hoots and bangs on his dashboard and then, just when it’s not safe, she rams her foot down and jumps out into the honking traffic. We’ll do well to get home alive, never mind live long enough for Seaneen to actually have the baby.

  There’s roadworks and a funeral. We inch up the Falls Road in second gear, juddering so much that Seaneen says she’s going to be sick and has to sit with the window down. I’m in the back and the thick city air – petrol and chips and dust – oozes past her and up my nose. I pull my sweaty T-shirt away from my body to try and cool down.

  ‘You shouldn’t be looking at that picture while the car’s moving; that’d make anybody sick,’ Mairéad says.

  The lights ahead turn red and Mairéad jams on the handbrake before the car’s properly stopped. ‘So, Declan,’ she says, in a now-I’ve-got-you way. ‘I suppose you’ll be thinking about a new job.’ She smirks at me in the rear-view mirror. For a few seconds I think she must know I’d been hoping to go away before all this, but in the next breath she says, ‘They’re looking for somebody to do shifts at the Spar.’

  ‘I have a job.’

  Mairéad puts the car into first gear and lurches forward. ‘I know you have your wee job with the horses. But Seaneen says you only get the minimum wage.’

  ‘Mum, I never!’ Seaneen turns round to me. ‘I only said, you’d think after doing your two years in college you’d get paid more.’ She turns quickly round again and I can tell from the way she leans back against the seatbelt that she really does feel sick.

  Familiar panicky rage huffs down my nostrils with the recycled city air. I nip one arm hard to distract me from wanting to hit Seaneen’s ma and throw myself out of this barely-moving car into the traffic. Watch the red pinch of skin turn slowly white and go back into shape.

  ‘I didn’t go to college for two years to work in a frigging shop,’ I say. Mairéad works in Tesco’s.

  ‘Could you not get a better-paid job with horses?’

  ‘If I went away.’ The words hang in the car.

  ‘Mum, you need to stop, I swear. Please.’ She doesn’t mean, as I think at first, you need to stop hassling my boyfriend who hasn’t done anything wrong; she means, you need to stop the car before I throw up in it.

  It’s the third of July. This is the week I was meant to start at Hans-Peter Hilgenberg’s.

  * * *

  Doris is surprised to see me. She’s struggling with the gate of the paddock beside the drive, which is hanging on one hinge. ‘I had a day off,’ I explain, ‘so I just came out.’ Even though it’s the truth my voice sounds tight and unnatural to me.

  ‘Jolly good,’ she says. ‘Blasted donkey,’ she goes on. ‘Burst through the gate at feeding time. Been here six months and still can’t get used to the fact that he doesn’t have to fight for his grub.’

  ‘Maybe I could fix it for you?’

  ‘Oh.’ She looks at me in surprise, her eyes narrowing into slits in her wrinkly face. ‘Any good with gates?’

  ‘I can try.’

  Turns out I’m not that brilliant with gates but I’m a lot stronger than Doris and, using mostly brute force, manage to cobble together a way of getting the gate to work. By the time it’s done and I head down to see the grey mare, the icy bad temper that followed me the whole ten miles here on the bike is melting.

  The mare, grazing near the tree again, looks whiter and smoother than last time. Quieter too, says Doris, who’s come down with me. Doris rattles the gate and the mare’s long ears flicker but she doesn’t shy or run away.

&n
bsp; ‘Spend some time with her,’ Doris says, pulling at the baler twine which ties up the gate. ‘Don’t be in a hurry. Just be.’ She sounds like an old hippy sometimes, for somebody who used to go ‘hunting with Henry and Harriet’.

  I sit under the tree and don’t try to get the mare to come to me. I set out some apple slices nearby. The mare ignores me. I flick one in her direction and she goggles in alarm but then cops on to what it is and slowly, step by step, approaches it. She stretches out her neck, wrinkles her nose and hoovers it up. Then she stands and, after a moment or two, goes back to grazing. I lean back against the rough, cool bark and watch the mare. She grazes with more intensity than any horse I’ve ever seen, as if the grass might suddenly disappear. In the distance I hear all the sounds of Rosevale. Some of them are the sounds you get in any yard, but there’s no ringing of iron-shod hooves, no clatter of jump poles or kids boasting about their ponies. There’s the chink of buckets. Neighs and ee-aws. Sheep maaahing in the next-door field, a whole conversation of it. The clattering whoosh of a hose being pulled out. I only realise I’ve had a headache when I start to feel it lift. I close my eyes and breathe in the smells of grass and air.

  I wake to the warm huff of breath on my shoulder, and a snort. Cold wet horsey snotter sprays my neck.

  I turn my head and there she is. Shining white, her dark mane parted down the length of her thin neck. She looks as if she can’t believe how close she’s come to me, all of her own accord. She stretches her neck out for the last piece of apple, which is right beside my left foot. I don’t move. Or breathe. Her eye stays on me. It’s purplish dark and soft, wary but not a black pit of hatred and fear any more.

  ‘Hey,’ I whisper in the quietest voice I’ve ever used. ‘Little ghost horse.’

  I raise myself onto my knees and very, very slowly stand up. She starts away but only for a few steps before she stops and looks at me with interest. Maybe it’s just that she smells the apple juice from my pockets. But whatever the reason, she stays and lets me touch her. I rub my hand down her shoulder. She shivers and then relaxes. Bits of her skin are still bare and pinkish with corrugated scabs. Her eyes run constantly because she’s sensitive to the light after being in the dark for so long. She flits her head away when I try to touch it, but she lets me stroke her neck and shoulders. I murmur nonsense to her the whole time. ‘Folly? Do you want to be my horse?’ I whisper. I don’t know why I’ve started calling her Folly; it just suits her.

  Folly’s ears flicker.

  * * *

  Cam and I sit in her kitchen. I don’t think she can have changed anything since her parents died, because it’s kind of old-fashioned. It’s tidier since Pippa came on the scene, but you’re still as likely to find a bridle and a few tubes of wormer on the table as a place mat or a salt cellar. Span jumps on my knee and starts nosing at a bit of dirt stuck to my sweatshirt.

  ‘You’re sure about this?’ Cam hands me a cup of milky coffee and sits down opposite me. ‘You won’t get itchy feet in the middle of the winter? Because if I’m going to have to replace you I’d rather do it now. I don’t want you leaving me in the lurch in January when the pipes are frozen and the yard’s a sheet of ice and I’ve twelve horses going mad in the stables.’

  ‘I promise I won’t do that.’ The baby will be born in January. ‘Cam? There’s something else. I’ve kind of got a horse. Well, I have got a horse.’

  ‘Good God.’ She cups her hands round her own coffee and shoos Spick down onto the ground from where he growls jealously at Span. ‘How have you managed that?’

  Without me, I think she means. I never imagined getting a horse without Cam’s help.

  ‘It’s the grey mare.’ I concentrate on stroking Span’s ear so she can’t see my face. ‘From the barn.’

  Cam’s quiet for a moment, as if she has to struggle to remember. We never mentioned the death barn after the first few days. I wonder if she’s forgotten or if, like me, she can’t stand thinking about it. ‘Gosh. Are you sure? That’s a lot to take on. You’d be better with –’

  ‘I know. But listen. She’s nowhere near as nervous as she was then. I mean, you saw her at her worst. I’ve been going up to see her most days after work. She lets me groom her and all.’

  ‘But … going up where? And why didn’t you tell me all this?’

  ‘She’s at Rosevale. Doris Rose’s sanctuary?’ Cam should know all this – the police, or maybe the USPCA, told us the night we found the horses that they were going to Rosevale.

  ‘Doris is still alive? She used to be a dragon at Pony Club.’

  For a second I see Cam, all red plaits and Pony Club tie, on a younger, livelier Sweep, and Doris telling her off for not having her stirrups shining.

  ‘She seems to run the place all on her own. I try to help a bit when I’m there but mostly I just work with the mare.’

  ‘Well, well. You’re a dark horse, Declan – no pun intended.’

  ‘But do you mind? I mean, I know she’s rough, but she’s improved. She doesn’t look like a toast rack any more. You could hide her somewhere if you don’t want the customers to see her. I know she won’t be a good advert for the yard.’

  ‘That doesn’t matter,’ Cam says. ‘Anybody can see we’re not in the habit of starving our horses here. As long as she hasn’t got anything.’

  ‘Well, she’s been at Rosevale for a month now. She’s been wormed, deloused, de-everythinged.’

  ‘What age?’

  ‘Six or seven.’

  ‘Broken?’

  ‘Doris thinks so.’ I don’t tell Cam that the clues Doris has spotted have all been pretty negative – sore areas on her back that may be the result of a badly fitting saddle, scars on her girth, roughness at the bars of her mouth. ‘So that’s good, isn’t it? I won’t have to start right at the beginning.’ I’m trying to make Folly sound as good as possible.

  Cam hesitates and lifts up my empty mug. ‘Sometimes that’s easier. You don’t know what bad experiences she might have had. You’ll probably have a lot to undo.’

  I haven’t really let myself think about this. But I have ridden some difficult horses over the last few years, and some young, green ones. I’m a good rider and I’m brave. And the difference is, she’ll be mine.

  ‘But you’ll help me, won’t you, Cam?’

  ‘Of course I will. Only, well … don’t expect too much. She’s had a bad start.’

  There’s no arguing with this. Whatever chain of events led to Folly being locked up starving in a barn, it can’t be a happy story. Cam’s only saying the things I told myself for weeks when Folly was still the ghost horse, haunting my nightmares and freaking me out. But it’s different now.

  Cam changes tack. ‘I’m sorry, Declan; I’m not being negative. I think it’s wonderful. Your first horse.’ She stands up and Span jumps down from my knee and wags her tail. ‘OK, better go and do some work. Don’t look so worried. You’re taking a chance, that’s all. It’s no more than I did, two years ago.’

  ‘What with?’ I can’t remember Cam buying a horse two years ago. Unless she means the Welshies, bought cheap as shy yearlings.

  She laughs. ‘Not a horse! On you. People told me not to expect too much. But you turned out OK.’ She grins like she’s remembering me when I knew nothing. When I joyrode Flight and nearly wrecked him. ‘More than OK.’

  ‘Oh.’ I don’t know whether to be flattered or insulted. A bit of both, I think.

  5.

  Folly clatters off the ramp, losing her footing and panicking, and jumps and trembles at the end of her lead rope. It burns across the palm of my hand. I jerk on it but she only wheels round and goggles in alarm at this strange new place.

  ‘Easy, baby,’ I beg her. She lifts her head, ears quivering, and squeals.

  ‘We’ll turn her out straight away,’ Cam says. ‘She’ll settle when she sees the other horses. And the grass.’ She doesn’t sound that convinced. Old Jim purses his lips and keeps his distance.

  It takes bo
th me and Cam to lead a jumpy Folly down the lane to the fields. We’re putting her in the small paddock we use for convalescent horses or newcomers, where they can see the other horses but have their own space.

  We manage to get her through the gate and she pauses just inside the field, head up, eyes huge and black. Here at Cam’s yard, which isn’t full of rescue cases, she looks very, very skinny and rough. She’s the ghost horse again, terrified and outraged.

  ‘She’ll graze in a minute,’ Cam says. ‘Stop looking so worried.’

  We lean over the gate, like we’ve done so many times, watching so many horses. But nothing was like watching this horse fling herself up and down the fence in panic. Because this animal with the angry eyes, the red pits of nostrils and the heaving, sweating flanks, is mine. My responsibility.

  I twist a blade of grass round my finger and will her to stop, to put her head down and graze and be content.

  Folly dashes up and down, wearing a path in the grass already, shuddering to a halt so close to the fence that each time you think, this time she won’t be able to stop.

  I don’t know how Cam can stand beside me so calmly, sucking a Polo mint. ‘I wonder how she’s bred,’ she says. ‘Looks more or less thoroughbred to me – those legs and that chest. Though the colour’s unusual … She could have been bred to race. A lot of horses who end up on the scrap heap are racehorses who haven’t made the grade. Who knows.’

  This isn’t what I want to hear. A horse bred to race, trained to race, can be difficult to retrain.

  But right now all I want is for Folly to stop pacing and throwing herself about and settle down. She ignores the lovely rich grass. Stops every few strides to neigh at Spirit and Willow who are grooming each other in the next field, ignoring her. From the bottom field, friendly Nudge lifts up her head and nickers back, throaty and curious.

  ‘She’s going to break the fence,’ I say. ‘Look, next time, she’s not going to turn, she’s not going to stop.’

  ‘She won’t break the fence. And if she does she can’t go anywhere except into Spirit and Willow. And she’ll get a nasty shock from the electric fence.’