Simon Barnes - Miss Chance

‘No trouble. Kath brought her over this morning, nigh sauce, happy with everything, bless her.’ Jan had a straggle of dark curls, jumble-sale clothes and more than a touch of gypsy. She ran the livery yard and bought and sold horses. Kath laughed in his face when he had told her that he was planning to keep the mare at Jan’s, and told him that Jan would ‘have you for breakfast’. ‘I turned her out after lunch ’cause she got restless in her box, and she got on fine, seemed to take a shine to Ed, bless him.’

‘No dramas, then?’

‘Course not.’ And she wouldn’t tell me if there were. All yard managers treat owners like amiable idiots, which in a sense is fair enough. They also treat all horses as if they were their own. ‘Brought, ’em all in just before five and fed ’em.’

‘She ate up?’

‘Every scrap. Nothing worried her. She’s a nigh sauce and she’ll not give you no grief.’ It is axiomatic that all yard managers know more about the horses in their care than do their owners. Jan explained about livery bills and their payment, the times when the yard could be visited, where the light switches were, the system for leaving messages and where the keys were hidden when she was away buying and selling or, as she occasionally did, sleeping or eating in her own home. All of which was essential information, but Mark wanted to see his horse. My horse.

Jan showed him the tack-room, and the place she had cleared for him, with a rack for saddle and for bridle and room on the floor for his trunk. She even helped him shift this item into its place, which was beyond the call of duty. ‘Right then. You’d better ride your rauce.’

‘I’ll just lunge her today.’

‘You get on her. She won’t give no trouble.’

‘We’ll see.’ A stock dismissive of his mother’s. Mark opened the trunk and removed the things he wanted. Including his green cord cap. He put it on his head. Horseman. He walked along to the boxes: a dozen heads, peering over their half-doors around three sides of a square. A strange joy seized him: the essential contradiction of it all. The mixture of cosy domesticity with deep wildness. That was the contradiction in this pleasant evening sight: the contradiction in everything to do with humans and horses. You seek wildness without wildness; you seek to tame without taming. And that last, that was precisely the problem that lay before him with this daft, lovely and troubled animal.

A head, bay, with a white star. He entered her box, talking soft greeting nonsense. A horse likes to hear the mood, read the intentions of the animals all around, equine, human, carnivorous. A horse always likes to know where every one is, and hates above all to be sneaked up on. The constant talking of horsey gibberish is a request: may I have permission to enter the border-country?

Mark slipped over her head a leather head collar that bore on a brass plate the name Trev. A gift, ancient but unforgotten, from Mel. It fitted well enough, on the topmost hole. He attached a lead rope by its clip and asked her to walk from her box. He tied her to a ring set in the wall, or rather, a loop of baling twine threaded through the ring. His fingers tied the quick release knot.

The mare accepted all this without fuss, even with kindness. The bouncing assertiveness of her madcap canter round Kath’s field, the terrifying vertical stand – these seemed matters connected with another horse, another being entirely.

Mark picked out her hooves with a hoof-pick and she lifted each foot in turn with easy courtesy. Then he brushed her vigorously with a body-brush, knocking the dust and scurf from the brush with a metal currycomb. Each movement took him deeper into the past. Trevor’s obstreperous behaviour before a show: he knew, all right, always read the excitement in the air. But the mare was kind and accepting, though she fidgeted uncomfortably when he brushed too hard. ‘Sorry, darling,’ he said softly. He had never called anybody darling. Nor angel, for that matter.

He removed her head collar, certain she would not take advantage of him. Put on Trev’s lungeing cavesson. Not to bother with surcingle and side-reins and stuff. Just attach the lunge-line to the ring on the nose, and grab the lunge-whip.

A crisis was approaching. The trick was to pretend that it wasn’t, because horses read human body language better than humans read horses’. Annoyingly, perhaps disastrously, he felt his pulse quicken. Pretend it wasn’t. ‘Come, miss.’

She saw the school ahead of her and stopped dead, as if she had walked into a wall. She had never seen it before. It was not the school where Kath had worked her, where Kath had tried to reform her with a series of beatings, where even Mark had hit her three times. But it was still a school, and she knew it. It was a Bad Place.

She stood a full inch taller, looking at the sand, every part of her expressing her not-quite terror. Damn it, Mark thought, I forgot my gloves. And hard hat, but I won’t need that, will I?

‘Come on, miss. Walk forward.’ Give her a bloody good belt and she’ll walk forward all right. A statue, staring forward at the bland sand, the abode of dragons. Mark let her stare for a while, mane-nibbling with his fingers, talking soft horsey gibberish. All right then. We’ll walk forward now, shall we?

Three paces, and another dead halt. Mark tried again, patting, talking. Plenty of time. Hope to God no one sees, they’ll think I’m the softest bloody touch that ever sat on a horse. Give us your lunge-whip, old son, and we’ll get her through.

‘Walk on, please, miss.’ And suddenly she was through the gate, and wild with excitement or terror at her own daring, and was dancing, threatening the safety of his toes. ‘Ah, the madcap,’ he said, much made up by this success, oblivious of the flying hooves, ‘I remember the madcap. Run about, then.’

And he was lungeing his horse in a circle, bracing himself against the wildness of her flight, taking a half-turn of line behind his back to stop the horse from water-skiing him across the school, and she ran her craziness to its end and at last started to work, and Mark kept her to it with little gestures of the long lunge-whip, never touching her.

And then all over again on the other rein.

Make much of horse. His old riding teacher’s instruction at the conclusion of any demanding piece of work. And Mark made much.

Back in her box, she was fêted with extra strong mints, and the smell of the minty breath of his horse was to breathe in the good past. He had reached out and touched her; his touch had been accepted. He stood for a while outside the box, leaning on the half-door, she looking out, occasionally touching him with her nose. Must leave. Bloody D. H. Lawrence to read. Write up those notes. Listen to the answerphone. Please God, not another surprise visit from Morgan. Perdition, he thought, catch my soul.

Rather rum. One of The Mate’s favourite expressions, and it seemed to cover every aspect of the situation. It had, indeed, been one of the rummer weekends of a life not untouched by rumness. And one of the rummest people he had ever met. By far the rummest he had ever kissed. What to make of it all?

It was hardly a personal triumph, for all the kissing, the being kissed back and the promise that he would kiss again. That strange night. Had he passed the test she had set him? Or had he abjectly failed? Did she know herself?

It had been a time stolen from the common run of things, that much at least was certain. But it had not been a lover’s idyll, a dalliance of hearts and bodies, of tempers and reconciliations and promises and plans. She had wept, yes, but only for the pier that stretched out into the sea. Rum.

It was thirty-six hours of magic, but not magic as the term is commonly understood. It was magic of the subtle, ambivalent and sinister kind that you find in Celtic myth. ‘Do you think you could learn to mildly dislike me?’ she asked. ‘It would make things so much easier, don’t you see?’