Grounded Read online

  ‘Hello?’ I call. I lean my bike against a low stone wall. Heads look out of stable doors. I don’t see the foal or the ghost horse.

  An old woman with a tired face comes out of the nearest stable, carrying a bucket. She empties its contents – water streaked with blood – down a drain before turning to me and growling, ‘Who let you in?’ I recognise the voice from the phone.

  ‘Um – the gate was open. I phoned. Yesterday? About the foal and the … the grey mare? From the barn?’

  I wish I’d asked Cam to come for moral support. She’s just as posh as this old biddy and always looks like a proper horsey person in her brown leather boots and nice puffy bodywarmer. I’ve come straight from work in track bottoms and a sweaty T-shirt. Mind you this old bag’s in ancient trousers with a bust zip and a washedout sweatshirt that says ‘Riding for the Disabled 1982’.

  ‘Oh, yes,’ she says. ‘USPCA brought them in, few days ago?’

  ‘Yeah.’

  ‘Terrible.’ She shakes her head. Grey hair sticks out round it like the petals of a daisy. ‘They can’t cope. None of us can. Seven last month. Tethered. Beside the M2. Doris Rose.’ It takes me a moment to cop on that she’s telling me her name.

  I shake my head. I don’t think I’m expected to say anything. She rinses out the bucket and refills it with clean water. Then she squirts some antiseptic in from a bottle sitting on top of the wall.

  ‘Come on,’ she says and I follow her back into the stable she just came out of. It’s small and low, must have been designed for sheep or pigs, and standing at the back of it, its head drooping over a thick bed of straw, is the foal. It’s light chestnut, far lighter than I imagined it being. I recognise its star, and the big soft brown eyes that have been haunting me ever since Sunday night, eclipsing the black angry pits of the ghost horse’s eyes.

  ‘Hello, baby,’ I whisper, stretching my hand out for it to sniff, but it doesn’t move.

  ‘Know anything about horses?’ the old bag demands, pulling bits of cotton wool out of her pocket.

  ‘I just got my national diploma in horse care and management.’

  ‘Huh.’ She hands me the bucket. ‘You can hold it,’ she says like she’s giving me some big treat.

  She bends over the foal and starts cleaning a wound on its back. I hadn’t noticed properly in the barn, but now that it’s more or less clean you can see there’s more swellings and sores and raw patches than there is normal skin and hair.

  ‘Infected,’ she says. Her voice is gruff but her hands on the foal are gentle and quick. It totters and runs backwards at the sting of the water, but she keeps her hand on its chest and talks to it and soon she has all its wounds bathed.

  ‘Will he – she? – be OK?’

  ‘Colt.’ She shakes her head. ‘Don’t like the infection. Injected him. Who knows? Right, next.’

  I think the next one must be the ghost horse but when I follow her next door I’m kind of relieved to see an old donkey lying on the straw. It starts up in alarm when it sees us but then relaxes, lipping at the edge of the bucket hopefully with its tiny soft mouth.

  I think it’s wearing a headcollar until I realise that the bands criss-crossing its grey head are the deep cuts and sores from a headcollar left on so long the hair must have grown round it. Mum’s finger swelled up once, when she was drinking, and she had to get her engagement ring cut off. The donkey’s head looks just like that.

  ‘God, that’s nasty,’ I say, as she cleans round it. The donkey stands and lets her, sniffing at me. I have Polos in my pocket. ‘Is he allowed one?’

  ‘Oh yes. Why not?’

  But the donkey doesn’t seem to know what to do with the Polo. It holds it inside its lips and then lets it drop on to the straw.

  ‘How many do you have?’ I ask.

  She stops and puts her head on one side, counting up on her fingers. ‘Seventeen here. Four on loan.’

  ‘So you do rehome them then?’

  ‘Some. Not all suitable.’

  I hear the words coming out before I know they’re going to. ‘I would take the wee foal.’

  She doesn’t say, ‘Oh, that’s wonderful, how kind of you; that’s just what I was hoping for.’ Instead she raises her thin grey brows as if to say she’s never heard anything so stupid. ‘What would you want with a foal, boy like you?’ She shakes her head as if taking in my shabby track bottoms and earring and my Belfast accent, and adding them up to something she doesn’t like much.

  ‘I just … because I found him.’ I don’t tell her I imagine the foal growing up to be a brilliant showjumper, overcoming his bad start in life, taking on the best in the world. He’d be mine in a way no other horse ever would because I’d rescued him, taken him from the body of his dead mother.

  None of this is stuff I can say out loud to this tiredlooking old woman with her bucketful of bloody water.

  ‘Takes a long time for a foal to grow,’ she barks. ‘No use to you for four years. Ever raised a foal? Let alone an orphaned runt like that?’

  I bite my lip. ‘Do the police or the USPCA know where they came from?’ I ask to change the subject.

  She takes a fresh piece of cotton wool and wipes a pussy scab off the donkey’s cheek. ‘Abandoned. The vet scanned the mare for a microchip in case she was stolen but there was nothing. But like I say, horses are being abandoned all the time. I keep saying I can’t take any more in but what can you do? You find a corner somewhere.’

  I don’t know why I’m sort of scared or reluctant or something to see the ghost horse, but old ma Rose – Doris – strides ahead of me to a stable in the far corner, looking over her shoulder to be sure I’m following.

  And when I look over the half-door – we don’t go in – it’s not a monster or an alien or a wild thing. Just a skinny white-grey horse with a dark grey mane and tail. She stands in the far corner from the door, knee deep in straw more or less the way I’ve imagined, pulling at a hay net with absolute concentration. Her face is rubbed raw and because she’s so pale the scabs on her body stand out even redder and angrier than the foal’s, but she looks as happy and involved in her dinner as any normal horse.

  ‘She’d be happier outside, but the flies would torture her. Lovely sort,’ Doris says in a low voice different from her usual bark. The mare’s ears flicker and she goggles at us in suspicion but then goes back to her hay.

  ‘Will you be able to get her a new home?’

  Doris purses her lips. ‘Nothing wrong with her that a bit of TLC won’t cure.’

  Just then she sneezes, and the mare squeals and dashes round the stable with her back humped and her eyes rolling. It’s the whites of her eyes that make me shiver: the layers of terror and trauma and hatred.

  ‘Bit sensitive,’ Doris says, wiping her nose with an old-fashioned man’s hanky. ‘All right, old lady, easy now.’

  But even when the ghost horse starts eating again her ears twitch constantly and she snatches only a strand at a time in between staring at us in horror.

  ‘If they could only talk,’ Doris says, moving away and starting, in a pretty obvious way, to walk me down the drive, ‘they could tell us a tale. Old Ned – the donkey – he’s well over thirty. Found in a back yard in Lurgan, tied to a fence. Lived on crusts.’

  I shiver at the idea of the tale the ghost horse, the foal and the dead mare could tell. I don’t know if I’d want to hear it.

  * * *

  ‘Declan! Your hat!’ Spirit skitters away from Cam’s pounding feet on the gravel drive.

  ‘What? Oh!’ I reach down and take my riding hat from her. ‘Sorry.’ I put it on, and Spirit takes advantage of me only having one hand free to snatch at the reins.

  ‘You would be if he dumped you on the road and you landed on your head.’ Cam shakes her head, kind of teasing, kind of not. ‘You gave Willow Sweep’s feed yesterday. With his medicine in it.’

  ‘I said I was sorry.’ I play with Spirit’s grey mane, the same colour as the ghost horse’s.

&nbs
p; ‘It’s just not like you. You won’t last five minutes at Hilgenberg’s if you don’t get your head sorted out.’ She reaches over and untwists Spirit’s throat lash.

  ‘Look – about that.’

  ‘You’re not having second thoughts?’

  ‘I … maybe.’

  ‘Gosh.’ Cam’s the only person I know who says gosh. ‘Well, let me know in plenty of time if I don’t need to advertise for a new groom.’ She seems to be working hard at keeping her voice neutral. She gives Spirit’s dappled neck a pat. ‘OK, have a good ride. And keep him working – no lolloping about.’ She goes to walk back up to the yard.

  ‘Cam?’

  ‘What?’

  ‘Job adverts sometimes say “own horse welcome”.’

  ‘So?’

  ‘So if I ever got one – if I stayed, I mean – could I keep it here?’

  Cam wrinkles her forehead like she can’t keep up with me. ‘Of course,’ she says. ‘I’d have to take something for its keep from your wages, though. I can’t afford to keep a horse for nothing. Anyway, we’ll talk about it if you find something. Spirit might be for sale at the end of the season.’

  ‘I think he’s out of my price range. By about ten thousand pounds.’

  ‘He won’t be if you don’t get his arse out round those roads. Go on – there’s seven saddles to clean when you get back.’

  ‘Can’t wait.’ I squeeze my legs against Spirit’s sides and, glad to get going at last, he steps out down the drive with his long purposeful stride.

  * * *

  I tell Seaneen first. Her face lights up and she hugs me. We’re in my bedroom. ‘Och, Declan! That’s so cute. We can have a foal and a baby. They can grow up together. Can the baby ride the foal?’

  ‘Of course not; don’t be stupid.’

  ‘Well, how would I know?’ But she doesn’t sulk or anything. ‘What about the horse? Are you taking it too?’

  ‘No,’ I say quickly. ‘The foal’ll be easier to rehabilitate.’

  ‘Not as traumatised?’ Seaneen says wisely. ‘It’s the same with kids. The younger they are, the better chance they have of recovering from bad stuff. We did all about that on my course.’

  ‘Plus I can’t afford to keep two. Specially with the baby.’ It’s the first time I’ve mentioned the baby to her. I don’t tell her my wages will be cut to pay for the foal’s keep. Maybe we could rent a wee house with a field near the yard. I conveniently ignore the fact that Cam lives in one of the poshest bits of Northern Ireland. Houses round there are sold, not rented, and never for less than a quarter of a million. Let alone the fact that I can’t imagine Seaneen living in the country. We still haven’t talked about what’s going to happen when the baby’s born. She still looks slim and normal, apart from her tits getting bigger, which I have to say isn’t a problem.

  ‘What’ll you call him?’

  ‘Dunno.’ I say it like it doesn’t matter, but I know he has to have a special name.

  ‘What colour is he?’

  ‘Chestnut. With a star.’

  ‘Chestnut. Like Flight?’ She grins the way she always does when she gets a horsey thing right.

  ‘Not as bright. But they change colour. He could end up grey or anything.’

  ‘Aww, I can’t wait to see him. I’ll buy him some apples. He’ll get spoilt rotten.’

  I imagine him grazing in the bottom field, up to his hocks in clover. Joy will mother him and Sweep won’t let him get cheeky and coltish, keep him in his place.

  ‘Call him Flame,’ Seaneen says. She hasn’t even seen him but Flame is a brilliant name – full of life and heat and colour.

  I give her a quick kiss. ‘That’s perfect,’ I say. ‘Flame.’

  For the first time getting the foal feels like something exciting instead of scary.

  * * *

  On Friday I look into Flight’s old stable. It’ll take about eight bales of shavings to put down a good bed. At seven quid a bale. Maybe Flame wouldn’t need a stable. He could go straight out into the bottom field. But the flies are bad – they’d make a meal out of his cuts and scabs. Maybe his wounds have healed now, though. It’s a week since I saw him, a few days since I’ve been hugging the secret of bringing him home. Only Seaneen knows so far but my next step is to tell Cam. No – my next step is to phone Doris and persuade her to let me take him. But if she’s as desperate for space as she says, she won’t say no, especially when I tell her I work for Camilla Brooke and he’d be going to her yard.

  I put off phoning her till after tea. I got home early for once and Mum was all pleased with herself because she’d made a shepherd’s pie. There’s no signal in my bedroom and I’m not going to let Mum hear the conversation so I go out into the back yard and walk down to the end of the garden. I’m so nervous I hit the wrong name and end up having this confused conversation with a girl called Roisín I met in Wicklow. But eventually I get through. It rings for ages and then the posh voice barks out, ‘Rosevale Stables, Doris Rose speaking.’

  ‘Mrs Rose? It’s Declan Kelly.’

  ‘Who?’

  ‘The one who found Fl – …the orphaned foal? And the grey mare? In the barn?’ I push at a dandelion with my trainer.

  ‘Oh yes. And what can I do for you?’

  I swallow my excitement. ‘It’s just – I’d really like to rehome the foal.’

  There’s a pause and I think for a moment I’ve lost the signal but when I take the phone away from my ear and check it, there’s five bars.

  ‘Hello?’

  ‘I’m sorry,’ Doris says. ‘The foal is dead.’

  2.

  I didn’t cry when Flight went. I didn’t cry when Seaneen got pregnant. So I don’t know why I’m sitting on the back step pushing my fingers into the corners of my eyes and trying to swallow the welling ache in my throat. I’ve only seen the foal twice. I should be relieved, really, because it was a crazy idea. Like Doris said, what did a boy like me want with an orphaned foal?

  ‘Declan?’ Mum nearly falls over me on her way to the bin with a bagful of peelings and leftovers.

  I glance to the side and dash my hands across my eyes and sniff up some snot. ‘Hiya, Mum.’

  But she’s not fooled. ‘Och son, what’s wrong?’ She sits down beside me, the rubbish bag between her knees. It leaks gravy. I angle my leg away from it.

  ‘Nothing, I’m fine.’

  ‘Is it the baby?’

  Not that baby, I think, but I haven’t told her much about Flame and there’s no point now so I just say, ‘No, it’s nothing. Mum, that bag’s minging.’

  She gets up and puts it in the bin. Flies buzz out when she opens it. I bat one away. I hope Mum’ll go back in now but she sits back down beside me. ‘I know it’s not what you’d planned,’ she says. ‘But sure you’ve got a job and a home. Many’s a one hasn’t.’

  ‘Yeah.’

  ‘And Seaneen’s a great wee girl.’

  ‘I know.’

  ‘And she’ll be a lovely wee mother.’

  I grit my teeth. ‘For Christ’s sake, Mum.’

  ‘Sure I wasn’t much older when I had you.’

  Is this meant to reassure me? ‘I know.’

  ‘And you turned out OK. In the end.’

  ‘Thanks.’

  She looks worried so I say, ‘It’s not the baby. It’s just – well, that wee foal died.’

  ‘What foal?’

  I pull at a ragnail with my tooth. ‘The one I found. I just wish – if I’d found it sooner it might have made it.’

  She looks dead relieved. ‘Och, well, if that’s all.’

  ‘That’s all.’

  * * *

  Seaneen cries too. Bursts into tears walking down the main road from the Spar. She fancied an ice lolly and I fancied getting out of the house. ‘Must be my hormones,’ she says, but I know she’d have cried even if she wasn’t pregnant.

  ‘I should have known I was never going to get my own horse,’ I say.

  Seaneen hands me her P
olly Pineapple lolly so she can wipe her eyes. ‘Course you will. Anyway, there’s loads of horses at Cam’s you can ride, aren’t there?’

  ‘It’s not even that. I couldn’t have ridden Flame for years anyway. I just wanted to give him a nice life.’

  She takes back her lolly and licks away the drips that have formed. ‘So?’ she says. ‘Take the other one.’

  My stomach tightens at the thought of the ghost horse. ‘The mare?’

  ‘Why not?’

  I shake my head. ‘She’s not really … she wouldn’t be’ – I remember the word Doris used – ‘suitable.’

  ‘Not suitable for what? Having a nice life?’

  ‘Seaneen, no harm but you don’t know anything about horses. She’s a psycho.’

  Seaneen shrugs. ‘OK.’ She lips off the last sliver of yellow lolly and tosses the stick into a bin. She takes my hand. Hers is sticky. We draw level with the park. ‘Want to go in?’

  ‘Not really.’

  ‘You’re jiggling my hand.’

  ‘Sorry.’

  ‘D’you want to get the bus up to Colin Glen and go for a walk in the forest park?’ Seaneen hates the forest park, which is always full of midges and things that make her sneeze, so she’s only saying this to please me because she can feel my restlessness.

  ‘Nah, it’ll be dark before we get there.’

  Seaneen sighs. I bet she’s thinking she hopes the baby isn’t a miserable sod like its dad.

  ‘Look,’ Seaneen says. ‘There’s wee Cian.’

  ‘Wee Cian?’

  ‘You know what I mean.’

  He’s sitting on a swing, a can in his hand, looking at the ground.

  ‘Hiya!’ Seaneen calls over.

  I jerk hard on her hand. ‘Don’t talk to him! He robbed off us.’

  But she calls over again. ‘Hey, Cian!’

  He looks up this time.

  ‘Tell your mum I tried those ginger biscuits and it helped. Well, a wee bit.’

  ‘Wha’?’ His eyes are unfocused. Round his mouth is red and scabby. The can in his hand is lighter fuel.

  Seaneen turns to me. ‘He’s sniffing something!’