Four-legged Confidantes by Sabrina

Four-legged Confidantes

Sabrina

(set after Treasure Hunt and immediately before Debt of Honour)

He says he doesn’t love me, but I think he’s lying.

Slugger says men don’t lie about love. I asked him last week. He said if a man loves you, he tells you so. If he doesn’t, he tells you too. Men are too simple to lie about love. When it’s ‘the one’ for them, they know, and there’s no point wasting time pretending to love someone if they don’t. That’s what Slugger said, mumbling over his pot of stew, stirring it so I shouldn’t see embarrassment on his face. He’s like the father I should have had rather than the one I have, so I ask him questions sometimes that are destined for a father’s ears, and that reminds both of us that we’ve made ourselves into a family. So I asked him about love, and he knew full well who I was thinking about at the time, and gave his honest answer.

But I still think Steve’s lying. There are so many layers to him, so much unexplored for all he’s told us of his life and all I know from working at his side, day by day. He’s an honest man, but I think in this case he’s hiding the truth. One can’t hide what’s in one’s eyes, and his eyes and his mouth don’t always say the same thing.

It’s the first time I’ve been in love, and I know I’m handling it badly. I should play hard to get, make him want me – a bit like Wendy! Oh, she knows how to flirt, that girl. I should have paid more attention in finishing school, practiced on the chinless expat wonders they dug up for us from under who knows what stone. I could see Steve getting more and more interested in her, and all I could do was get jealous and not be able to hide it. Not know HOW to hide it, if I’m being honest with myself.

Steve told her I was one of the kindest, gentlest, nicest people he knew, despite my appalling behaviour – he wouldn’t have said that if there weren’t deeper feelings there for me. I have the brooch she gave me for winning the cross-country competition sitting on my dressing table, two horses prettily galloping along looking for all the world like Copper and Alex. I organised the competition and knew full well Copper would be the best horse on the day – after all, I’d had the chance to ride the course and time myself again and again. In my supreme confidence I had decided not to have a prize for the winner as I’d be embarrassed taking it. But Wendy’s little prize embarrassed me much more. And upset me, too, as if it were a consolation prize, second to that of Steve’s heart, which she had won.

I wondered – no, I IMAGINED – what went on in those so-called ‘riding lessons’ Steve gave Wendy after the cross-country race. How often did he touch her leg to show her where the right place was to put it? Did he kiss her when she’d dismounted, all giggly with her blonde hair windblown? Did he hold her hand as they walked Tamminy back to his stable? My mind was a whirl of hurt and jealousy. The nights when Steve was so late back he missed supper I could barely stand to be in Slugger’s company, but went upstairs to my room to watch for him walking back into the yard, hear his carelessly happy whistle. The one thing I couldn’t do was wait downstairs to see the contentment on his face. Steering clear of him was the only way I could not let him see my jealousy, because I’m certain it escaped from every pore of me.

Oh, it would have been so much easier to have fallen for Ron, simple Ron with his wicked laugh and sparkling eyes, his shady side, his laziness, his frank appreciation for girls. But I’ve never done things easily and Ron doesn’t touch my heart in the same way Steve does. It’s the unknown in Steve I both love and dread.

When Slugger told me Wendy had ditched Steve and he’d had to walk miles home, I felt sorry for him but my heart flew. Perhaps he’d see now that I loved him, had always loved him, that I was here and available.

Oh, he saw that! Only last week, after we’d cared for the horses belonging to Agnes and Emily, not to mention caring for the two sisters themselves and reconciling them, he told every moment spent with me was a treasure, and to give him time. Maybe time would close the gap between us.

That was a treasured moment for me, too – the sound of hope! Of acknowledgement we could be something a lot more than friends and workmates. His eyes said that we already were. I wanted his arms around me, his reassurance, but as usual the most he’d give was a touch on the shoulder. I got more reassurance from hugging that dear, ancient tree with its scarred old trunk rough against my cheeks.

There are times I KNOW he sees the same rainbows I do, has the same dreams, the same wishes. We DO have a future – why can’t he admit it? He drags out the old argument about me being rich and he being poor, but can’t he see that doesn’t matter? It might have mattered when my mother was young but this is 1971. Times have changed and they’ll keep changing.

For all his toughness, his children’s home, his prison, I think he’s scared. Scared of love, scared of caring. Scared of ADMITTING to it more than anything. His mother hurt him abysmally and betrayed his trust. How can I convince him I’ll never do the same?

Oh, come on, Copper. Hold still and let me put the bridle on. I can’t see properly – these wretched tears. Mustn’t let Steve see me crying, I’m sure he sees it all too often. Good boy…good boy.

* * *

Her eyes haunt me. There’s so much love there it’s overpowering. If I were her type of fella, posh parents, posh school and all that, it wouldn’t be a problem. She’d be easy to love, very easy, and it’s damned hard not to.

But she can’t see that it wouldn’t work. How could I mix in with her parents? I haven’t met them but I’ve heard enough about them to know what they’d think of me. Dirty stable boy, straw in his hair, not a qualification to his name and not quite our sort dear. Not a diplomat’s son-in-law to be trotted out at cocktail parties. See me sipping on some silly drink with a paper umbrella in it, my little finger cocked out! Nope.

Dora says she doesn’t care for that life, that she only wants to be with horses, and I believe her. But that background is there. It’s the background that lets her fit in at the Colonel’s big house, not just at Follyfoot. I don’t have that. She mightn’t care but I do.

It’s fine right now, she’s eighteen with stars in her eyes, bubbling over with love and jealousy. She was so furious when I was courting Wendy that I was hard pressed not to laugh sometimes, cruel as it sounds. I mean, that temper! It makes you grin despite yourself when she flounces out of the kitchen and slams the door so hard Slugger’s pot rocks on the stove.

I needed Wendy. I needed to see if I could feel for someone else what I feel for Dora – and of course I couldn’t. She came close but no cigar as they say. Wendy was fun, carefree, without Dora’s whirling emotions. Without Dora’s pure heart and goodness, too – Dora sees in black and white, good and evil. Horses come first for her, no matter what she feels for me. If there’s a horse in trouble she’s there, fighting in its corner for it. She’s serious, serious beyond her years.

Wendy was fun, all shades of grey if you like, rather than black and white. She was good company, a bit of a laugh. Sexy, too. Not in the same league as Dora, who even looks sexy in her oldest clothes – and a total knockout when she does dress up, almost makes my eyes pop. Still, Wendy was pretty easy on the eye when she wasn’t in her riding clothes. Nice legs in a dress. Shame I never got to see all of her, but it was heading that way when she dumped me.

That’s the trouble with posh girls. There we were, having a pint at a pub. Well, she was drinking some fizzy girl drink and I was having a pint. She starts asking what I want to do in the future, once I moved on from Follyfoot? Moved on? I said. I don’t have any plans for moving on and I told her that. Follyfoot’s my home and my family, awkward as it is sometimes with Dora throwing tantrums. Didn’t I want a place of my own? Where was my ambition? Surely I had ambition, didn’t I want to go places in the world, ride horses in shows, be a trainer or something? Suddenly she sounded like my old probation officer and that put my back up. Then we were arguing, with me discovering that under the flirting and pretty face she could be bossy as hell. She wanted to pull me up to her social scale, have me join the local hunt without even listening to what I think about hunting - foul, cruel sport that it is.

Fifteen minutes later I’ve been dumped, and she speeds off in her little MG leaving me to walk back to Follyfoot. It took me about an hour, during which time I composed several savage letters about bossy girls I had no intention of sending to her and a stupid little poem which just about covered it, really. I thought a lot about Dora, too – another posh girl. Another person who doesn’t want to leave Follyfoot.

But that’s now and like I said, she’s eighteen with stars in her eyes. If she hitches that star to me now, and I let her, and I let myself fall in love with her, what happens when she grows up, grows out of me, grows into her class and money? In ten or fifteen years’ time, will she still feel the same? Because I’m sure I will. That’s why I have to hide it from her – to stop her making a decision she might regret, when she’s thirty and still posh and I’m thirty two and still happier in a stableyard than in the Colonel’s smart house.

I came that close to telling her last week how close I was to loving her, how easy it would be to do. She looked fragile and beautiful, holding onto that tree near the lake and fighting back tears. I wanted to take her in my arms and kiss her, and just let myself go, let the feelings happen.

But I couldn’t. Deep down I’m scared I reckon, scared that even if I let myself love her, it won’t be enough in the long run. She won’t know it now, can’t see it now. She can only see me as the boy she loves, and damn the social gulf. She’s got her ideals, her perfect world that consists of saving horses side by side with me. She’s got so much growing up to do – so much learning about shades of grey and not just black and white.

So I argue with her to keep my distance, I flirt with girls like Wendy, I pretend I’m indifferent to her eyes, to every move she makes that tells me she wants more than friendship.

There’s nothing more I’d like to do than take her in my arms and kiss the sadness from her face, but I just can’t do it. It wouldn’t be fair to either of us. Not now, any road. Mebbe one day, it’ll be the right time, and I hope I’m not too late, that she won’t have given up hope and let some daft young lord put a ring on her finger.

Alex! Stop movin’ about, there’s a lad. Let me tighten the girth. If I stand here talking to you any longer Dora’ll wonder where I am, and I don’t want her to hear any of this.

* * *

A couple of miles away a man named Parkes waits in his car by the side of the road for some bloke named Hitter from Silly Hand Farm.

In Carne Manor, two gloriously green hills further on, Martha - Lady Carne - runs a sad hand along the frame of one of her few remaining valuable portraits. The house echoes behind her as she shuts the door and heads for the stables, where the thing she loves most in the world right now, Jellicoe, hangs his handsome chestnut head over the door, whickering. He has no idea that he’s about to be taken in return for gambling debts.

Dora leads Copper from his stable after surreptitiously wiping under her eyes with a careful finger. It’s a superb day for a cross-country ride and Steve, already mounted on Alex, grins at her. A genuine, lovely grin of excitement at the thought of a fast ride on a good horse with a beautiful woman urging her horse alongside his, and it comes to his face unbidden and unexpectedly.

Dora feels her heart swell at that grin and her insides turn to jelly. She mounts a wheeling, revved-up Copper with shaky legs.

“Race you,” Steve says, urging Alex into a fast canter.

The breeze whips their faces and all that Steve will see now if he glances at her is that her eyes are filled with tears from the wind. Lovely wind, hiding all emotions, Dora thinks as they gallop happily towards the road in the far distance.

The end