by Francis - TO THE HILT

It couldn't be helped. I scooped a handful of water out of the trough and smelled it, and although it wasn't the cleanest ever, judged that if the horse had passed it fit, it wouldn't kill me. Cold water was never bad at anaesthetising hunger: and hunger was an odd sort of thing, not so much a grind in the stomach as an overall feeling of lassitude, and a headache.

I put my hands into the jacket pockets for warmth and slept sitting up, and soon after two o'clock (according to the luminous hands on the cheap watch I'd bought to replace my father's stolen gold one) awoke from cold. Everything was so quiet inside the shelter that I went in in some alarm, but Golden Malt was still there, safely tied up, asleep, resting a hock in mental twilight, his eyes open but no thoughts showing.

I walked around quietly outside to unstiffen and warm myself and after a while drank more water and sat down again to wait for dawn.

None of my thoughts was hilariously funny.

Surtees's second-hand dislike and spite towards me would now certainly have intensified into personal hatred, because he would think I had made a fool of him in front of his daughter. No matter that he had belligerently chosen to come to remove Ivan's horse, no matter that it was he who had rushed me first to knock me down, he would care only that Xenia had seen him fail on both fronts: the obnoxious Alexander had made off with the goods and left her father imprisoned in a box for horses, looking stupid.

Xenia, with whom I had no quarrel, could now be counted a foe for life. Her mother's consequently increased antagonism might really give a bodyguard work. Someone had sent the robbers to my bothy.

Next time you'll scream…

Bugger it, I thought. Even if I should dump Ivan and all his concerns (and with him, my mother) I wouldn't necessarily free myself from Patsy's obsession or revenge.

Surtees was Ivan's son-in-law. I was Ivan's stepson. Which of us, I wondered vaguely, took legal priority? Did priority exist?

I itched to paint, I longed to go back to my easel, to my silent room. Zoл Lang filled crevices in my mind to such an extent that in the middle of wondering if water were drinkable I would see the hollow under her cheekbone and think 'purple glaze on turquoise thinned with medium'. The face of the inner woman had to be built of glazes, of colour not as opaque as outer living skin might be, but still to be unmistakably the person who lived in that flesh, who thought and believed and confronted doubt.

I had set myself an unattainable ideal. Such human skill as I could summon wasn't enough for the job. I felt the suicidal despair of all who longed to do what they couldn't, what only a few in each century could -whether blessed or cursed in spirit. No achievement was ever finite. There was no absolute summit. No peak of Everest to plant a flag on. Success was someone else's opinion.

I drifted and dozed and woke again shivering in the first grey promise of light. Golden Malt was pawing the ground, his hooves thudding heavily on dirt, giving me the prosaic news that he had finished his hay. I undid his head collar and took him outside for a drink, and felt, if not exactly a communion with him, at least an awareness of being a fellow creature on a lonely planet.

Deciding that grass would do for breakfast he walked around a bit, head down, munching, while I held his rope and thought of coffee and toast. Then, as daylight more positively arrived, I saddled and bridled him in the shelter, and changed my trainers for jodhpur boots, to look and ride better, and finally, when the morning's first exercise strings would be peopling the landscape, heaved myself and gear onto his back and set about completing the disappearing trick.

I rode to the east, towards the strengthening light. I knew that the Ridgeway path lay to the north of me, also running west to east. Not far ahead I would come to the road from Wantage going south to Hungerford, and I wanted to cross that to reach the next wide expanse of open downland on the far side, where many trainers had their yards but wouldn't know by sight a conspicuous horse from Lambourn. Neither Emily nor I, in my rush to be gone before the lads arrived for evening stables, had given a thought this time to a hood and boots for hiding Golden Malt's white features.

I came to the main road and dismounted to walk the horse across, needing to open and shut gates on either side but, that done, I was free on the wide lands south of Wantage, with five or six miles available in most directions to find a suitable string of horses to attach myself to and follow.

I was looking for a small string of no more than four or five, as I reckoned I would get a more hospitable reception from a small-scale trainer: and so it proved. Just when I thought I'd drawn a blank and was in trouble I came across four horses plodding homeward, one of them being led by a lad on foot.

I followed at a distance and tried not to feel disconcerted when my leaders headed towards the heart of a village from where I could see ahead the huge swathe of the main north-south arterial road, the A34: impassable, if not impossible, for horses to walk across.

The road into the village led downhill. The string of four marched on, undaunted, and I found we were crossing the road beneath it, to a second half of the village on the far side. On through the village, the horses turned in between the peeling gates of a small stable yard.

A motor horsebox stood in the yard with a trainer's name and phone number painted on it. I retraced Golden Malt's steps to a phone box we had passed in the village and, juggling reins and coins, took the trainer away from his breakfast.

I was, I explained, an owner who was also an amateur jockey. I had just had a blazing row on the Downs with my trainer and had ridden off in a fury, and I was looking for somewhere to park my horse while I sorted things out. Could he help?

'Glad to,' he said heartily, and showed no less enthusiasm when I shortly arrived on a good-looking thoroughbred, offering generous cash for its board and lodging.

When I asked the trainer ('Call me Phil') the quickest way to London he said, 'By taxi to Didcot,' and I thought it ironic that I'd travelled three parts of an oval on Golden Malt and ended in the underpass village of East Ilsley which was actually nearer to Surtees's stud farm than to Emily's yard.

I would come to fetch my horse later that day, I told Phil, and he said not to hurry. He phoned for a taxi for me. We shook hands, in tune.

Back in London I met Ivan's and my mother's anxiety with perhaps more reassurance than I truly felt. Golden Malt, I assured them, was secure and well looked after, but it might be better to move him right away from the Berkshire Downs area where, to horse-educated eyes, he was as recognisable as a film star.

I asked Ivan to lend me his copy of Horses in Training , which gave the location amongst other details of every licensed trainer and permit holder in Britain, and I asked my mother to phone Emily and get her to go out shopping in Swindon or Newbury, as she often

did, and to phone back to Park Crescent from a public phone there.

'But why?' my mother asked, puzzled.

'Emily's walls have ears, and Surtees is listening.' My mother looked disbelieving. 'And,' I added, 'please don't tell Emily I'm here.'

My obliging parent talked to Emily, who cheerfully said she would be going shopping soon, and forty-five minutes later she was telling my mother the number she was calling from in Swindon. I took the number and my mother's phone card and jogged to the nearest outside line; and Emily wanted to know if all this cloak and dagger stuff were necessary.

'Probably not,' I said, 'but just in case.' I paused. 'What happened when I left?'

Emily almost laughed. 'The lads came for evening stables and let us all out. Xenia 's tantrums turned to tears. Surtees was purple with fury and phoned the police, who arrived with a siren wailing that upset all the horses. Surtees told them that you'd stolen Golden Malt but fortunately the police had been to my yard before when we had a lot of saddles and bridles stolen, and they believed me when I said the horse was Ivan's and you had absolute authority to look after it in any way you thought best. I showed them the copy you gave me of the power of attorney and they told Surtees they wouldn't start a police hunt for you, which sent him practically berserk. He was yelling at the police, which did him no good at all with them, but I begged them to stay until he had gone because he was so violent I was afraid he would attack me or some of the horses. So they tried to quieten him and finally got him to drive his trailer away, but Xenia was crying out of control, and if Surtees reached home without causing an accident it will have been a miracle.'