Philippa Gregory - Meridon

‘Oh Dandy!’ I said. ‘You are so beautiful!’

She smiled. The sweet beguiling smile of her childhood.

‘Am I?’ she said with innocent total vanity. ‘Am I beautiful, Jack?’

He dropped the bell he was polishing and put out his arms to her.

‘Yes,’ he said, in the only tender tone I had ever heard him use towards her. ‘Yes, you are lovely.’

Dandy floated towards him with a sigh, but then she suddenly saw the dirt on his hands and stepped back, fending him off. ‘Don’t touch me, you’re filthy!’ she exclaimed. ‘Anyway, there’s no time! Robert says I’m to help you dress, Meridon, and wash your hair. Go to the pump and I’ll bring the comb and a towel. Jack, you get washed too. You’re hands are black and they’re already waiting outside in the lane. Your da’s on the gate already.’

I ran to do her bidding, but out of the corner of my eye I caught sight of a brief resentful look which went across Jack’s face. He did not like taking orders from Dandy. He had not liked it on the trapeze swings, he liked it even less on the ground. And least of all did he like it when he had just, for the first time ever, held open his arms to her, openly, in broad daylight. He turned away, as sulky as a spoilt child, and went to his wagon. I watched the slouch of his back and thought how that little gesture of desire from him was curdling to resentment. I don’t think Dandy noticed him at all.

The water from the pump was icy and it made me cold all through. I shivered in my wet shift as Dandy combed my hair and pulled roughly at the tangles.

‘If you combed it every day it wouldn’t tangle like this!’ she said crossly as I flinched and complained. ‘Now I’m going to plait it like mine!’

‘Oh leave be, do, Dandy!’ I begged. ‘It will take you ages, and I hate being fussed about.’

‘Robert wanted all us girls with the same hair,’ she said. ‘Katie’s wearing blue and gold ribbons in her plaits, me with green and gold, and you’ll have red. Now kneel down,’ she said inexorably. ‘It will only take longer if you fidget, Merry!’

I knelt. The grass under my knees around the pump was soaked and made me cold. My wet hair hanging down my back dripped chilly droplets down my spine. The sun had lost its heat and I was shivering from the cold by the time Dandy had finished.

‘What were you going to tell me when we came into the field?’ I asked her. ‘What were you going to tell me about Jack?’

The odd secretive look came over her face again. ‘Not now,’ she said. ‘I’ll tell you after the show, when we’re not in such a rush.’

‘All right,’ I said, unwilling to wait. ‘But it’s nothing bad is it, Dandy?’

She smiled at me, the warm complacent smile of a woman who knows she has everything. ‘Nothing bad,’ she said. ‘And if this man likes the flying act then that makes it better and better.’

I would have pressed her for more, but Rea came running to tell us that Robert had opened the gate and had a full house already. Dandy and Katie must go quick and start selling drinks and sweetmeats.

‘And the man from London’s here,’ he said.

‘How d’you know?’ Dandy demanded, pausing in her flight. ‘What does he look like?’

‘Great driving coat,’ Rea said, very much awed. ‘Enormous buttons, huge capes, high high hat. And very shiny boots.’

Dandy nodded. ‘I’m gone,’ she said and picked up her short skirts and dashed to our wagon for her cape.

‘You look nice, Merry,’ Rea said awkwardly. I knew I did not. Dandy and Katie had chosen colours to suit themselves. Neither of them had thought how I would look with red ribbons in my copper hair. The colours screamed at each other. Dandy had scraped my curls roughly into plaits, and tied them too tight, so that the skin on my scalp and forehead was sore. I was scowling with the discomfort.

‘I know I don’t,’ I said unhelpfully. ‘But it doesn’t matter.’

Rea grinned sympathetically. ‘Shall I take them out for you again?’ he offered.

I shook my sore head. ‘I don’t dare!’ I said. ‘Anyway, I’ve got to get ready.’

I ran off to my wagon and Rea went back to watch the gate and collect the pennies of latecomers.

As soon as I was dressed in my blue riding habit I went back out to the horses with my working smock pulled over the top.

This was rich farming country, good flat land with a dark fertile soil. The barns here were huge, big enough for all of the horses to be inside at the same time. As soon as he had seen the extra space in the corn-rich counties Robert had put the little ponies in the opening parade and we had trained them to go two by two behind Snow ridden by Jack. I came behind all of them on Sea. Then Dandy and Katie came riding in dressed in their flying capes, both sitting sideways bareback on Morris. Bluebell brought up the rear with his steady reliable canter and two billowing flags set in either side of his harness. It was a good start to the show but it meant that all the horses had to be ready at once.

Jack was already behind the barn with the ponies, screwing the bells into the ponies’ headbands. Rea was trying to put a plume into Sea’s headband, who was tossing his head and shying away from the bright feather although he had seen it a hundred times before. Rea was cursing him in a soft gentle voice, careful not to frighten him more.

‘I’ll do that,’ I said. ‘You put the coats on Bluebell and Morris.’

Each of the rosinbacks now had a little cape in the bright pink of the girls’ flying capes. They should have been in the box for the horses’ special tack, with the plumes and the bells.

‘They’re not here!’ exclaimed Rea.

We had a few moments of whispered rage. Jack blamed me, but I could clearly remember folding them and putting them away the night before. Rea swore they had been there a moment ago and Jack cursed him and said he must have lifted them out and laid them down somewhere. Rea denied it, and I told Jack to stop trying to swing the blame to one of us and help look. In the midst of all the confusion and anger Dandy came swaying up as lovely as an angel with her pink cape floating behind her, and the horses’ capes over her arm. She had taken them to brush them clean. Jack cursed her roundly for not telling us, and Dandy smiled back at him as if nothing could touch her, as if she cared nothing for his anger or for his likes and dislikes. I felt that same coldness I had felt when the water had run down my back while she was washing my hair. I shuddered.

Robert opened the big double barn door and put his head out to see us. Behind him I could hear the clatter of many people crowded into the small space.

‘Everyone ready?’ Robert asked. He was red with suppressed excitement, but trying to be calm. ‘Good audience tonight. Full up. And the man from London is here to see the show.’

He had himself well under control, but I could see that his hand on his whip was shaking. ‘This could be the making of us,’ he said softly. ‘I cannot tell you how important it is you work your best tonight.’ His voice was almost imploring. He looked around. ‘Horses ready, Meridon?’

‘Yes, Robert,’ I said, and I smiled at him. He might have worked me until I was weary through to my very bones with tiredness, but he was a man with one goal in view and I could not help but smile with pleasure to see him coming steadily and surely towards it.

‘Well, better start then!’ he said. He stepped back into the barn and I could imagine him striding into the very centre of the floor. We had scattered fresh woodshavings down that morning and Robert’s boots would look as black and shiny as Quality against the whiteness. We had put down hay bales to mark out a ring for the horses and all the little children would be sitting on the other side of them, their faces wide-eyed, looking over the top. Behind them would be the double row of benches reserved for the Quality and for those willing to pay thruppence a seat. Behind them was a row of straw bales for the twopenny spectators, and behind them, and standing in the doorway, and scarcely able to see at all, were the people who could afford nothing more than a penny but who clapped the horses longest and loudest for they knew – as the front benches did not – how long and hard you have to work with a horse to make him mind a whisper.