The Enchanted Read online

  Kathleen nodded down at the bed, worried. ‘He really shouldn’t be talking, Mr Rawlins,’ she murmured. ‘So tiring for him. I think we should leave him, so.’

  ‘Of course we must, Kathleen,’ Rory agreed. ‘And just as I was enjoying the story too.’

  ‘The horses belonged to Cuchulain, the god of the sea,’ the voice from the bed continued. ‘It was said they were once the waves on the sea which was why they could go over anything …’

  ‘We’ll come in and see you tomorrow, Blaze.’ Kathleen nodded briefly at Rory, indicating that she thought they should be heading for the door.

  ‘The horses had endless power and they would weep tears of blood if one of the warriors was killed. Cuchulain’s horses were immortal and possessed a divine knowledge of Fate,’ the voice from beneath the bandages continued.

  ‘As Kathleen just said,’ Rory told Blaze, following her to the door, ‘one of us will look in tomorrow. You just get better quickly. And completely.’

  ‘Some of them – some of them were sent from the kingdom,’ Blaze went on, speaking in snatches. ‘Some of them – some of them left Mananan to be sent out from the sea, and when they reached the shore …’

  ‘’Bye, Blaze,’ Kate said, easing Rory out of the door before her.

  ‘Once they were ashore they took the earthly form and went into the world to perform all manner of wonders.’

  ‘See you tomorrow.’ Kathleen shut the door on Blaze and his ramblings.

  ‘They went forth into the world,’ Blaze went on, now quite alone, ‘to do wondrous things, to do the magic that would make the people understand, love and worship horses. Those were the wondrous horses that were from Mananan, the horses that have come down to us to this very day.’

  ‘What was all that stuff about horses of Manahan or wherever?’ Rory wondered as the two of them walked out of the hospital.

  ‘Mananan,’ Kathleen corrected him, looking away across the car park. ‘He’s obviously still concussed.’

  ‘Horses that could weep tears of blood and had – what was it? Had a divine knowledge of Fate,’ Rory mused. ‘I just loved that. A divine knowledge of Fate.’

  ‘I hope he’s going to be all right, Mr Rawlins,’ Kathleen said, changing the subject, zipping up the front of her anorak and tossing back her head of long black hair. ‘I really do hope with all my heart he’s going to be OK. He took a right old knock, so he did. I don’t know how he stayed on as long as he did. Yes, well, I do actually. He stayed on because Blaze Molloy is something special. Something very special. At least I think he is.’

  ‘You do? You think so?’ Rory said, with a quick glance at her across the roof of his car as he unlocked the door.

  ‘Of course,’ Kathleen replied. ‘Don’t you?’

  ‘Yes, but it’s different for me. By that I mean, yes, I think he’s … he’s special, but perhaps in a d-different way.’

  ‘You’re a man,’ Kathleen said, waiting to be let into the car. ‘You’re bound to see it differently.’

  Rory frowned, got into the car and opened the passenger door.

  ‘What I meant was I think he well might be an exceptionally talented young jockey,’ he continued, settling into his seat. ‘While what you th-think of him—’

  ‘What I think of Blaze was firmed up the moment I saw him, Mr Rawlins.’

  ‘Really?’

  ‘I think he’s already very special. Yes.’

  ‘Yes, I see. As far as riding g-goes? Or – or …’

  ‘Or what, Mr Rawlins?’ Kathleen asked, looking round at him with what seemed like genuine bewilderment on her beautiful young face.

  ‘Well,’ Rory muttered, firing the ignition. ‘You and Blaze – n-n-not that it’s any of my business—’

  ‘If you say so, so then it isn’t.’

  ‘I don’t understand what you mean by that. I was being p-p-polite.’

  ‘Of course you were,’ Kathleen agreed. ‘And I was being polite as well.’

  ‘L-look,’ Rory grunted as he drove out of the hospital car park. ‘How this all started – I was simply wondering—’

  ‘Then don’t, if you’ll excuse me. Wondering usually leads to the wrong conclusions.’

  Rory took a deep breath. ‘You like Blaze.’

  ‘Of course I like Blaze. Don’t you?’

  ‘Of course I like B-B-B-Blaze!’ Rory returned, banging two clenched fists on the steering wheel.

  ‘Be careful now,’ Kathleen warned him. ‘I don’t think you saw that bus.’

  ‘I saw the b-b-b-bus. I saw the bus, thank you.’

  ‘Not that it’s easy driving in this rain – and in this light.’

  ‘I was simply trying to establish …’ Rory tried yet again. ‘All I was wondering was in what way you – you know …’

  ‘Sorry?’ Kathleen frowned and looked round at him again. Rory glanced back at her, taking his eyes off the road, and a car hooted angrily at him.

  ‘Careful—’

  ‘It’s all right. It’s all right, I s-saw him,’ Rory replied, eyes back firmly to the front.

  ‘All you were wondering was …?’ Kathleen prompted him.

  ‘It doesn’t matter,’ Rory replied with a shrug, feeling that he had tied himself completely in knots. ‘It really d-d-doesn’t matter.’

  ‘OK,’ Kathleen said brightly. ‘Then if it really doesn’t matter, we won’t bother going on with it, so.’

  ‘Kathleen …’ Rory groaned.

  ‘It’s OK,’ Kathleen replied, looking quickly away out of her window. ‘No worries.’

  ‘Kathleen.’

  ‘Really, Mr Rawlins. No worries at all.’

  ‘I do wish you wouldn’t call me M-Mr Rawlins.’

  ‘I work for you, Mr Rawlins,’ Kathleen replied, still looking out of her window. ‘I couldn’t possibly call you anything other. It wouldn’t be fair on everyone else.’

  ‘One day, maybe,’ Rory muttered.

  ‘Of course,’ Kathleen agreed politely. ‘What will be.’

  Unable to think either of how to reanimate their conversation or of anything fresh to say, Rory lapsed into silence, as did Kathleen, both of them wondering at their failure to connect, Rory ascribing it to Kathleen’s obvious interest in Blaze and Kathleen to Rory’s equally obvious lack of interest in her. Finally, unable to contain himself any longer yet still unable to think of quite what to say, Rory shook his head and turned briefly to her, to find her sitting staring down at her hands, which were clasped in her lap.

  ‘OK,’ he said. ‘So. Penny for them.’ Kathleen looked up at him, a worried expression now clouding her beauty. ‘Penny for your thoughts.’

  ‘I was just thinking I really shouldn’t have done this,’ she replied. ‘Gone to the hospital. I really should have gone back in the box with Boyo.’

  Sensing they were now on ground where the very angels might fear to tread, since once again his companion had turned herself away to look out of her window on the dark landscape flashing by, Rory sighed quietly to himself and put a music cassette in the car radio, drowning himself and his private consternation in the sound of Arthur Rubinstein playing the Chopin ballades. Finally, as they had all but reached Fulford Farm and the tape had finished playing through the first side, Rory ejected the cassette and tried one last and different approach.

  ‘This is really à propos of nothing in particular, Kathleen,’ he began. ‘J-j-just a completely general enquiry – but when you came here, when you agreed to work in the yard, did you put a t-time limit on it?’

  ‘Why do you ask that?’ Kathleen asked quickly, thinking that she must somehow have displeased her employer and he was now wondering whether to ask her to go. ‘Have I done something wrong?’

  ‘No.’ Rory laughed, although his mood was a far from happy one. ‘No, of course not. You do everything right. Just right. No, no – I was just wondering what your plans were.’

  ‘In truth I’d hoped I’d be able to stay as long as I was needed, Mr Rawlins. But if you�
�d rather I went – that is, if you feel that I’m not needed any more—’

  ‘No, I didn’t say that, K-K-K-Kathleen—’

  ‘Sure I’ve done what I came to do, Mr Rawlins, so you’d only be right,’ she said as the car turned in at the top of the long drive down to the yard. ‘We have the horse fit and well, he’s winning his races, you’ve staff enough now – and anyway, my father’s at me to go home all the time so really it would be best all round if I were to go back as soon as is convenient.’

  ‘This is entirely your call, not mine,’ Rory replied, now parking the car at the yard gates. ‘What do you really want to do?’

  ‘What do you really want to do, Mr Rawlins?’ Kathleen asked in return, turning a pair of now dark and troubled eyes on him. ‘Really.’

  ‘That’s neither here nor there, K-Kathleen – what I really want to do. We’re talking about y-you here.’

  ‘Is this what you want?’

  ‘Is what what I want?’ Rory shook his head, finding himself unable to cope with the way the conversation was going hither and thither, sensing a subtext but unable to quite make sense of it. ‘I really c-c-can’t follow this.’

  ‘I don’t think this is what you want at all,’ Kathleen said quietly. ‘Not one bit of it.’

  ‘Are we talking in general terms here? Or are we being specific? What I was asking—’

  ‘And what I was meaning, if you’ll forgive the interruption, was that I’ve always sensed you’re only marking time. But then that’s me being previous and that I mustn’t be, so forgive me.’ She smiled at him, almost formally, then opened her car door. ‘I’ll be gone as soon as is convenient – and thank you, Mr Rawlins. It has been great, but as they say, all good things … Thanks, anyhow.’

  Then she was gone. He watched her walking into the yard then breaking into a run as soon as she was through the gate, hurrying to Boyo’s box to make sure her horse was safe and sound and had travelled home all right. She shut him up for the night and walked quickly off to her quarters, with Rory still sitting in his car watching her. He hoped she might stop and turn round, the way they often did in films, to take a look back, and if she did he would be out of the car, running into the yard and taking her up in his arms – but that was not the way it happened. Life was not like the movies, Rory told himself. Life was far more prosaic, harder, less forgiving. In real life people did what Kathleen was doing now – continued to walk to their destinations without a stop, a pause or a backward glance.

  Anyway, as far as Kathleen Flanagan was concerned, Rory decided that he was hopeless – or rather perhaps that it was hopeless. Kathleen Flanagan quite obviously loved another, so as far as his own aspirations went he might as well try to catch a moonbeam, or light a penny candle from a star.

  ‘Yes, well!’ Anthony Rawlins shook his head and laughed when the two of them had finished watching the video tape Rory had brought back from the course of The Enchanted’s race that afternoon. ‘Good heavens, it’s hard to believe it’s the same little horse we bought that day when we were both tight!’

  ‘I was the one who was footless, Dad, not you.’

  Anthony smiled. ‘Forget about beware the Greeks when they bring you gifts. More to the point would be to beware the Irish measure, my son.’

  Rory took the tape out of the video player. ‘Well, you’ve seen the videos of his other two races, so what do you think?’

  ‘I have to say – with a certain amount of caution, naturally – that I can actually see what the excitement is about, Rory.’

  ‘When you think that this is only his first season and that was his third race. His third proper race …’

  ‘It’s a race often won by younger horses, old man, there’s that in his favour,’ Anthony said, holding up an empty glass to be refilled. ‘The point is, you don’t want to run him at Cheltenham, but your little quorum do. It’s the usual dilemma with trainers and owners. A race like the Gold Cup can ruin a young horse, as we both know.’

  ‘There’ll be plenty of other chances, Dad, God willing.’

  ‘I always used to think that, you know,’ Anthony replied, sipping his whisky and water. ‘Until I was persuaded to run Starlight Fleet in the Schweppes at Newbury. He was ten pounds out of the handicap. Didn’t think he had a hope. I told the owner the selfsame thing. The horse was young, he hadn’t many miles on the clock, and there’d be plenty of other chances, I said. But the owner stuck to his guns and you know the rest of the story.’

  ‘He sluiced home by a distance.’ Rory looked rueful as he remembered.

  ‘Which is exactly why we trainers don’t like running our horses out of the handicap. It makes it look as though you haven’t been running them on their merit.’

  ‘The Gold Cup isn’t a handicap, as you well know, Dad.’

  ‘Same point. For weight, read class.’

  ‘What you’re saying is if owners insist on running their horses—’

  ‘Then you must run them,’ his father replied. ‘Or make it look as though you will. You do at least have to make the entry. What you can do then is try to advise them against it. Talk them down slowly, use reason and gentle persuasion, and ninety-nine per cent of the time the owners will come round to your way of thinking, because at the back of their minds they know or they think you know best.’

  ‘But if they don’t come round?’

  ‘Then you have to run. The owners own their horses. The owners pay the bills. So the owners have the right to say where their horses run. Remember dear old Eileen Nesbitt? When she had her horses here, she insisted they only ran in televised races, when in fact they were barely out of egg and spoon class. But since her health prevented her from racing and she wanted to see them run, the only way to do that was to run them in televised races. It was agony for me, old man – can you imagine? Time after time they’d trail in last, if they finished at all, so that was very good for one’s reputation, I don’t think. For a while I was a complete laughing stock. But there you are. They were her horses, and she paid the bills.’

  ‘Point taken. Now come on, time to eat. We have a mass of turkey to finish up.’

  ‘Rory?’ his father said as he followed Rory out. ‘I do appreciate what you’re doing, you know.’

  ‘Oh, nonsense. I’m not doing anything.’

  ‘Yes, but sooner or later, and preferably sooner,’ Anthony insisted, putting a hand on his son’s shoulder for support, ‘we’re going to have to make some other sort of arrangement.’

  ‘Everything in due course,’ Rory said, holding the kitchen door open. ‘That’s what you always say – everything in due course. Now come on – we’ve got some rather good burgundy to finish off.’

  The following morning it began to snow. At first it snowed only in light flurries, but by mid-afternoon when Rory was sitting in the office with Maureen preparing the entries and catching up with his paperwork, the fall had become a blizzard.

  ‘I do hope we’re not in for a freeze-up,’ he said. ‘My father always says this is the curse of racing at this time of year. You get your horses right just at the time winter decides to kick in.’

  ‘Luckily it’s a level playing field, Rory,’ Maureen reminded him. ‘At least it is this time round because apparently, according to the news, the whole country’s blanketed.’

  ‘Sure,’ Rory sighed. ‘But some of the rich boys in Lambourn have got covered canters so they can at least keep their horses moving, keep them in work. You know what our gallops get like here when it snows. Talk about north to Alaska. And who on earth’s that?’

  Rory rubbed some of the condensation off the window and stared at a small figure battling its way through the blizzard, one arm held up face high in protection against the snow. He got up quickly from his desk and hurried outside.

  ‘Hello?’ he called. ‘Who is that?’

  ‘No, please!’ a small female voice answered him. ‘Please don’t worry! It’s only me!’

  As soon as he was outside and got a better look at their
unexpected visitor Rory thought he knew who it was, yet he could hardly believe his eyes when finally he helped Constance out of the storm and into the warmth of his office.

  ‘What on earth … ?’ He came in behind her, closing the door. ‘Connie, what are you doing here?’

  ‘Don’t even ask,’ Constance replied. ‘This is not a day to remember.’

  On her way down to stay with Lynne, Constance had missed her stop. Lynne had invited her because, having read the rehashed stories in the newspapers concerning Red Andrew and his once equally suspect wife, anticipating her friend’s imminent distress, she had telephoned Constance at once and offered her refuge, an invitation that Constance had gratefully accepted, only to miss her stop at Andover. It had begun to snow heavily in London long before the weather hit the west, so by the time Constance was able to get off the train at Salisbury, the next stop down the line, the services had been so disrupted by the snowstorms that all trains in and out of the capital had been cancelled.

  Unable to get back to Andover by rail, Constance had tried to get a taxi to take her, but to no avail, all drivers flatly refusing to take the risk of driving anywhere other than within the city itself. Panic stricken, and after a moment of not knowing what to do, she remembered that Rory lived close to Salisbury. She decided to try to get herself transported to Fulford Farm, which she imagined to be only a short hop from the city. Again every driver she asked to take her there refused, advising her to book into a hotel until the weather cleared. Constance was about to throw in the towel and find a room when a local lad in a large truck, overhearing her dilemma, offered her a lift since Fulford Farm was on his own way home.

  ‘I couldn’t telephone you to warn you, because the queues at the public telephones were right round the block,’ Constance explained as Rory took her soaking wet overcoat to hang it over the Aga in the kitchen, and then filled the kettle for tea. ‘And the lad who brought me here was quite understandably anxious not to delay any longer than was necessary.’

  ‘He didn’t bring you all the way down here, surely?’ Rory asked. ‘Even with four wheel drive I doubt if he’d have got back up again.’