The Enchanted Read online

  There was no time for tears, as there never is on a farm; no time even to curse Sweeney. They must do what they could. Padraig ran to the telephone as Kathleen tried to give comfort to the foal who stood looking down at his fallen mother with uncertainty already in his milky eyes, unsteady still on his lanky legs while Kathleen with one arm around him put her free hand to his mouth in the hope that he would suckle it until her father returned and she could boil and cool him some milk. But as soon as he was called her brother arrived, and was at once dispatched to prepare the feed.

  By a miracle, and on only his fourth call to neighbouring farms, Padraig located a mare who had lost a foal not half an hour before. He was offered the stricken mother at once as a foster, and knowing the urgency the neighbours had her loaded in their horsebox and delivered to the farm just as Kathleen was trying to interest the foal in a bottle of warm cow’s milk.

  ‘Here, girl,’ the groom who’d brought the mare across said to her, handing her a tin. ‘Himself said you’d be in need of this, in case you’ve none yourselves. ’Tis colostrum. He always keeps some frozen for just these times.’

  The groom had brought another container as well, a much larger one, a packing case from which he produced the skin of the dead foal, helping them to drape their own live foal in it before leading the mare into the next-door stable. Hoping the disconsolate creature would accept the stranger as if it were her own, Kathleen passed a head slip over the nose of her foal and led it to where the foster mare stood waiting, ears back and tail swishing.

  ‘Wait now,’ the groom advised Kathleen, putting one arm out in front of her to prevent her progress. ‘She’s a kick in her, this one.’

  He had hardly spoken before the mare lashed out, a blow which might well have caught the foal and finished it had Kathleen not been stopped in her tracks. Once the mare had calmed down, Kathleen slowly led her foal to the mare’s head so he could be seen. The mare looked down on the strange sight, the uncertain newborn swaddled in the skin of her own dead foal, and slowly flared her nostrils at him. For a while she did nothing more than regard the interloper, making no move to familiarise herself with him, her nostrils still wide, one eye fixed on the creature standing unsteadily by her side. Then at last, as Kathleen was beginning to despair, the mare slowly lowered her nose until it rested on the foal, and left it there. The foal staggered at first under the sudden weight; then, as if sensing something, turned its head to look up at the creature standing over him. The eyes of the two animals caught and held and then the mare flared her nostrils even more and blew gently down at her foot.

  ‘They’re met,’ the groom said quietly. ‘He’ll be on her in no time at all.’

  So he was, too, helped by Kathleen who went round to the far side of the mare and slipped a hand under the animal’s stomach, the same hand the foal had suckled earlier. A minute or so later a soft warm mouth found her fingers, and Kathleen slid her hand slowly back to the mare’s teats. First time, the foal refused, insisting on fingers rather than teats, but the next time Kathleen kept her hand just out of reach until the youngster took hold of the mare and began to suckle.

  ‘I’d still give him the colostrum,’ the groom advised as he prepared to leave. ‘For that’s not his own mother’s milk. And we all know the meaning of that, so we do.’

  ‘If there’s ever a thing we can do,’ Padraig said, walking him through the dawn light to the horsebox.

  ‘You can let us know when he’s to win his first race,’ the groom replied, stopping to light a smoke. ‘Which he will. For I see he has the mark of the prophet.’

  ‘He does.’

  ‘So there you are.’ The groom smiled. ‘Be sure now to tell us.’

  The foal belonged to Kathleen. Not that it was ever said. It was simply understood, so much so that from that moment on Padraig was always to refer to the foal in such a way, as in you’d best go see what that foal of yours needs, and later that colt of yours is fooling about in the paddock again, and even later, as he raced with his companions in the fields, that horse of yours has come on a stride or two. Will you look at him go, daughter of the house?

  But though he flourished, and filled out well, and strengthened nicely, fed on the good grass that sprouted on top of the limestone, he never grew tall.

  ‘He’s not had his mother’s milk, that’s why,’ Kathleen would state when she and her father leaned on the fence and watched the young stock graze. ‘Though the mare, God rest her, his mother was a good size.’

  ‘Size isn’t all in a horse, Kathleen, until you come to sell it, and then isn’t it everything?’

  ‘He could run over timber, Da. If he has any toe, sure he might be a hurdler, who knows?’

  ‘If there was only three more inches to him, girl,’ Padraig replied, lighting his pipe, ‘he could make us a million, but today all they want is a good big horse. They’re not wanting anything but size now – what they all calls a fine stamp of a horse. As if any of them has the eye, as if any of them has anything but a chequebook. Chequebook breeding, I call it. You’ll be lucky if you find an owner for him, and then only if you give him a case of whisky to go with the little horse.’

  ‘Ah well, if he’s too small to sell, then maybe we’ll keep him so,’ Kathleen said hopefully, hopping up and over the fence to take the colt his afternoon treat of a sliced carrot and calling back, ‘You never know – he might win us something!’

  When he was weaned and turned out, Kathleen fell into the habit of hiding herself unseen in the long grasses of the paddocks, two or three hundred yards away from where he was cropping grass with his companions. She would crawl on her hands and knees to her chosen hiding place, making sure her foal was downwind of her, then lie on her back, waiting. The first time he found her, it took him six minutes by Kathleen’s watch. Ever after that, no matter what time of day she hid nor how carefully, he would come in search of her. Rarely did it take him longer than a couple of minutes to find her; the average was a count of fifty.

  Kathleen would lie, always in a different place, flat on her back with her eyes closed, waiting. At first she would hear the delicate pounding of his young hooves as he came to look for her. Not a sound would there be from her, until she opened her eyes and found herself being observed by two round brown orbs, after which he would nudge her, buckle his legs and lower himself to the ground to settle beside her. Finally when it was time for Kathleen to return to her work he would walk slowly beside her to the gate, where she would give one last pull at his ears or a ruffle on his neck before letting herself out. The moment she unlatched the gate he would dip his head, kick out his hind legs, turn on a sixpence and gallop off back to join his friends, and one in particular, a pretty little dark bay yearling filly out of a mare owned by the neighbouring farmer. Kathleen watched the friendship grow between the two young horses, hers becoming attached to the filly as if they were meant to be together, never leaving her side, running with her, and grazing by her side. And when one of them got down to doze in the grass, the other would always stand sentinel.

  She never put a leading rope on the colt. Instead she would call him at first with a whistle, but soon all she needed to do was appear at the gate and he would come to her. Finally she would arrive at the gate only to find that he was already waiting, more often than not in the company of his girlfriend, whom Kathleen had christened Finoula.

  Her brother usually broke the horses. Liam was good with them, but of late he had grown tall and gangly, and with his sudden growth had come a loss of balance. His hands had grown heavy, too; as a boy he’d had the touch of a girl, his father would tell him – not farmer’s hands, boy, Padraig would say.

  ‘You don’t want farmer’s hands. A horse is in its mouth. A horse is all its mouth. Would yous like a great bar of steel being banged on your teeth as if ye’d no feeling? Indeed you would not, so keep those hands light – like your sister there. She is holding ribbons, boy – ribbons of silk, not chains like ye’re holding there! Lighten your hands and s
it through the horse – don’t sit on him like that! Sit through him, boy! And when you’re thinkin’ of stoppin’ him, do just that! Think it – don’t pull the bit through the back of his head! Sit down – sit back – change your weight now – and easy! Ease him back – ease him! Sure he’ll have no mouth on him be the time ye’re done, boy!’

  Padraig Flanagan might not look much on the ground, a short round-shouldered man who limped from a boyhood riding accident, but up on a horse he was a changed man. Flanagan was a part of every horse he rode. He rode from the leg and the seat, and although he’d the Irish habit of a forward foot, once he had hitched his irons up to racing length and perched himself on the horse’s withers he was nothing but balance. Then he would ride his work, all the weight transferred down to the middle of his gumbooted feet, the reins clutched double in a bunch behind the horse’s neck, his eye firmly fixed through the animal’s ears on a point in the middle distance.

  ‘But I want to back him, Da,’ Kathleen pleaded. ‘Boyo will expect me. He won’t want Liam. Boyo won’t go for him. I know it. Don’t go asking why – I know Boyo and please, please let me back him, Pa, please?’

  The colt had always been known as Boyo, since to begin with Kathleen could think of no suitable or indeed possible stable name for him. He’ll come to his name, one day, she’d reasoned. If I can’t think of a name now it’s because I haven’t the right one ready.

  Padraig knew as well as Kathleen did that she must be the one to back him, but he also knew that when it came to horses nothing worthwhile ever came easy. He said he’d think about it. Said he would mull the matter over, give it every consideration.

  ‘Very well,’ he finally announced. ‘Since you’ve done nothin’ but keep at your poor father every day for the past two months about the business of backing your horse, I have finally made up me mind, so I have.’

  Kathleen knew better than to prompt her father.

  ‘Kathleen here is too light and too weak, I’d say, Da.’

  ‘And I’d have to agree with you, boy,’ Padraig replied with another nod. ‘I’d have to agree with you there …’

  ‘It’s only common sense, Kathleen, seeing that you are a girl.’

  ‘Am I now, Liam? I never noticed.’

  ‘I’d have to agree with you, Liam,’ their father continued, raising his voice, ‘if you were right and if I thought you might fare better – but since you are not right and you would not do better I have to disagree with you.’

  ‘Ah come on, Da – sure you’re only teasing me?’

  ‘I am not so,’ Padraig replied. ‘I am commissioning Kathleen here to put a saddle across this horse of hers and that is that.’

  Padraig was all too aware that Kathleen had already been about the business. He had caught sight of her putting a roller on the colt’s back, then following it by gently easing on a saddle; witnessed the horse eating his dinner with the saddle still on him, although as yet ungirthed; seen his daughter from a distance down the field walking the horse in a bridle, then with a saddle on, later with a sack of potatoes slung across the saddle; and finally watched from afar as she carefully tightened the girth under the saddle and let the irons swing loose against Boyo’s side, although, to be sure, it was only the way they always did things with the young horses.

  So when it came to it, it was as if the horse had always had a saddle on his back, for what with the weight of the potatoes, and much else, when she had finally slowly and carefully swung her right leg over the saddle, having stood in the left stirrup only while her father had taken a light hold on the animal’s head, and sat herself down as lightly as she could, the horse only moved an ear. When she felt his calm she nodded at her father, and Padraig let go his hold and stood back, allowing him another chance to take flight, but still Boyo only stood, ears pricked, eyes bright.

  ‘We’re going to walk on now, sweetheart,’ Kathleen told him quietly. ‘I’m going to pick up the reins, I’m going to ease you forward – and we’re going to walk on.’

  She gave the horse only the lightest squeeze with her legs. The moment she asked him, he moved – not a sudden burst of activity, but a rhythmic, well-measured pace, easing into an elegant walk that took him in a generous left-handed circle round the small railed paddock. Later she stopped him, turned him, and had him walk round on the other rein. Finally she walked him in four diagonals and one straight line, before calling to her father to take hold of his head while she dismounted as gently and carefully as she had mounted.

  ‘That’ll do fine for today, young man,’ she said, patting then kissing his neck. ‘You did just grand.’

  Handing her father the saddle he was waiting to take, Kathleen slipped the bridle off and left the paddock, the horse keeping pace with her. She walked to the main field fifty yards away, and opened the gate. Boyo followed her, but once in the field he didn’t run off to join his companions. Instead he stood staring out to the distant hills and the sea beyond, with a look that reminded Kathleen of his mother, the day the three of them had found her on the beach. Then he got down and rolled slowly and pleasurably in the well of dry mud by the gate, got up again, shook himself off and chose as his grazing spot a place not five hundred yards but five feet away.

  Kathleen leaned on the gate and watched him. She watched him until she heard her father calling.

  Padraig was waiting in the yard, smoking his pipe as usual, and leaning up against a closed stable door.

  ‘The day is not long ahead when we have to sell Boyo, you know that, Kathleen?’

  ‘I know that, Da,’ Kathleen replied, quickly picking up the yard broom and beginning to sweep. ‘But not today.’

  ‘We’re not here to keep horses as pets.’

  ‘Well, I never. You know, I never knew that.’

  ‘It’s as well to remember it, Kathleen. We can make no preferences, and we are poor people, as I have always told you.’ Padraig took his pipe from his mouth and eyed the smouldering tobacco. ‘Every horse we have is born to be sold.’

  ‘There’s the matter of his passport still,’ Kathleen replied. ‘You’d have to have that sorted out.’

  ‘Don’t I already have it that?’ Padraig put his pipe back in his mouth and drew on it before continuing. ‘Not that it need be a real concern of yours—’

  ‘I’d have thought not knowing which stallion bred him and with no papers for the mare it’d be a real concern for us all.’

  ‘Then for your edification I say our neighbour John Slattery has franked the necessary documentation that says the sire was his stallion,’ Padraig said, carefully watching his daughter. ‘King of the Sea was your horse’s sire, and it shows the dam was Mananan’s Girl—’

  ‘The mare you had to buy back from the Heaslips?’ Kathleen exclaimed. ‘But she’s as barren as a hill in Greenland!’

  ‘All that’s needed is a name on the passport,’ her father replied. ‘And your Uncle Noel in Ballydehob has verified the document.’

  ‘You never had Uncle Noel do that, Da?’ Kathleen asked, wide-eyed.

  ‘I had so. Sure he’s a veterinary himself, is he not?’

  ‘He’s a vet for small animals, Da!’ Kathleen protested. ‘He’s a family pet man. The only horses he ever sees are on merry-go-rounds!’

  ‘And that’s for us to know, girl, and for nobody else,’ Padraig replied firmly. ‘It won’t be the first time a man’s had to go this route, don’t you worry. The horse is a thoroughbred, there’s no doubt of that, and since he’s gelded now there’ll be no career at stud to worry about. Sure the breeding’s only words on a racecard. What matters is what the horse does, that’s what matters.’

  ‘But Da—’

  ‘That’s enough of your buts, my girl. We’ll have no more on the matter, so be about your work. We have plenty enough on our hands.’

  ‘We’re short of chaff, Pa,’ Kathleen muttered, eyeing her father as she swept round his feet, trying to get him to go. ‘You’ll need to cut some more.’

  Her father
remained where he was and put another match to his pipe of tobacco.

  ‘Mick Finnegan has a horse he can’t be backing,’ he said, blowing the match out from the side of his mouth. ‘His lad has a leg broken, and the horse is getting skittish. I said I’d send you along.’

  ‘Is that right?’ Kathleen wondered. ‘And will he pay me?’

  ‘I doubt it,’ Padraig replied, taking a satisfied look at his now properly lit pipe. ‘But sure you can always try axing him, but I doubt he has ever given a girl money, however good she may be.’

  Kathleen said nothing more. Her father walked off and she watched him go, his pipe leaving a curl of blue smoke in the air. Sure it was a man’s world. They had the paying of everything so they had the say of everything, it seemed, just as it didn’t seem fair. She began sweeping the yard as clean as she could get it, wondering what was going to happen and how much longer she would have her horse to herself.

  Still, she had time enough. Time enough to enjoy watching her youngster grow and, in bringing him on, time enough to relish their rides on the long empty beaches and their treks up into the hills beyond their small farm, time enough for them to grow so close they became all but inseparable, time enough to watch the friendship between the two young horses grow; and yet she knew somewhere the wheels were already in motion that would bring the strangers across the water in their search for good horses. And when that day finally came, as Kathleen knew that it surely would, then she would lose him, and she also knew that when she had lost him she would spend her spare time wondering where he had gone and what his poor fate might be.

  ENGLAND IN THE EARLY 1980s

  Chapter Two

  Under Orders

  ‘I didn’t know you was interested in racing, Mrs D.,’ Evie Tranter said, coming to a stop in front of the television and holding her feather duster in front of her as if it were a bunch of flowers. ‘All the years I’ve been coming here, I’d never have put you down as being interested in horse racing.’