Annan Water (3 page)

The dream images kept reminding him of the girl, but he had forgotten about the river and the song. His mother hadn’t. On the way back, when the horses had finally relaxed and were walking along like a troop of seaside donkeys, she rode up beside him.

‘
Woe betide you, Annan Water, By night you are a gloomy river.
’

He remembered the tune as she sang it; remembered his grandmother’s voice.

‘
And over you I’ll build a bridge, That … that …
Mmm. I can’t remember how it goes.’

‘It’ll come to you,’ said Michael. ‘It doesn’t really matter, anyway. I was just curious.’

‘You’d better go to school,’ said Jean. ‘They’ll come looking for you if you don’t make an appearance.’

‘I don’t like that school.’

‘You don’t have to stay there much longer. Just until the end of the year.’

Michael wished he did like school. His older sister, Fiona, had been an awful lot smarter than he was. She had been an absolutely brilliant rider; better than any of them, his father sometimes said, but she had insisted on going to school; refused to take time off, no matter what was going on in the yard. Michael used to think she was mad, until she got her A levels and left home. Then he realized what it had all been for. Study had been her passport out of the yard. He had left it too late. He didn’t have a way out. On the occasions when he allowed himself to think about it, he could see no future for himself beyond home and the horses. He didn’t know what he wanted, but he knew he didn’t want that.

Woe betide you, Annan Water.

Now that the tune was in his head, other little snatches began to appear.

Annan Water’s wondrous deep, And my love Annie is wondrous bonny.

Dum, dum de dum.

Go saddle for me the bonny grey mare …

What was it that Annie’s mother had said? About a young man on a grey mare?

Frank noticed the time and swore. He put his horses into a steady trot and Michael fell in to the string.

‘Come to court our Annie, perhaps.’ That was what she had said.

H
E SAT AT THE
back of the class, on his own, near the window. The teacher, a Mr Burns, made several attempts to include him in the discussions, but gave up. They were studying
Macbeth
. It was clear to Mr Burns that the new boy not only had no idea what he was talking about, but had no interest either. It was difficult enough keeping the good pupils involved. There wasn’t the time, and there certainly wasn’t the energy, to interest the unwilling ones.

‘So what’s happening here, with the lady, hmm?’ he said. ‘Has she really fainted, do you think?’

No one answered. After a moment’s pause, Mr Burns went on. ‘Bit convenient, isn’t it?’

Into the silence that followed, the new boy spoke. ‘What does “Woe betide” mean?’

‘Where’s that?’ said Mr Burns. ‘I can’t see where it says that.’

‘It doesn’t,’ said Michael. ‘I just wondered what it meant.’

‘Well, it means … I suppose “woe” is just that. Woe. Sorrow. Misery. Unhappiness. And “betide”—I suppose that means “befall”. Or “happen”. Woe betide you. Misery attend you. Bad things will happen to you. A kind of warning, I suppose.’

‘A warning or a curse?’

‘Curse?’

‘Is it, like, you know, a hex?’

Several of the other students were snickering quietly.

‘Who do you want to hex?’ said one of the boys, but Mr Burns silenced him with a glance.

‘Well,’ he said, ‘if I said to you, “Woe betide you if you don’t do your homework,” it would mean that if you didn’t do your homework you could expect trouble to come of it.’

‘And if I was a river?’

‘You’ve lost me.’

‘He’s lost all of us,’ said the same boy, and the rest of the class burst out laughing.

‘Where did you see it, Michael?’ said Mr Burns. ‘Why does it interest you?’

But Michael had retreated into his shell again.

‘Michael?’

He didn’t even look up. Mr Burns sighed and returned to the text.

M
ICHAEL WAS RIDING HORROCKS
in the jumps paddock. It was almost dark, and he was beginning to fear that the horse couldn’t see the jumps properly. But darkness was no deterrent to Frank Duggan. The horse would work until he got it right. Then he would stop, and not before.

‘Over the double again, and straight on to the upright.’

The horse was lazy. Michael had to kick like mad to get him going at all, and use his stick hard to keep him moving past the gate. He had to hammer him into the jumps. His father was standing nearby, moving in each time with the long lunging whip at the ready. Horrocks was still reluctant, but he was learning fast.

He took the double well. Loads of scope; it was a shame he was so nappy. Michael was lining him up for the upright when he heard his mother calling him. The horse lifted and sailed out over the jump. Perfect.

‘What is it?’ he heard his father call back.

‘Someone to see Michael!’

Frank sighed and took a long, hard look at the sweating horse. ‘He’ll do,’ he said at last. ‘Go on in with him.’

The lights were on in the yard. Someone was leaning against the door of the cow shed, talking to Jean inside. Michael jumped down and led Horrocks past. The person turned to face him. It was the man he had met the previous day, down beside the river.

‘Hello, Michael.’

‘Hello.’ Michael led Horrocks up the ramp of the horsebox. Until his father finished building the new boxes, they were chronically short of space.

Jean appeared at the foot of the ramp. ‘You didn’t tell me you two had met. I was at school with this gentleman, Michael.’

Michael pulled the saddle and bridle off the horse and closed the slatted gates behind him.

‘Jimmy Souter is my name,’ said the man.

‘Oh.’ He dumped the tack in the dingy little dairy, collected a sweat rug and returned up the lorry ramp. Jimmy followed him.

‘It was nice to meet you yesterday.’

Michael draped the sweat rug over the horse and threw the heavy jute rug on top of it, upside down.

‘Annie liked the horses.’

Jean had already been round and filled the haynets and the water buckets. Michael patted the horse’s neck and came out, closing the gates behind him and slipping the steel collar on to secure them. Jimmy followed him down the ramp of the lorry and helped him to close it.

‘I was wondering if you’d be interested in giving her lessons.’

‘Eh?’

‘Annie. Riding lessons.’

‘Oh.’ Michael glanced towards the lit door of the cowshed, as though expecting his mother to answer the question for him. ‘I don’t know if I’d be let,’ he said.

‘You would.’

‘When?’

‘How about Saturday morning? I’d have Annie ready.’

‘Down there by the river?’

‘If that’s all right.’

It was and it wasn’t. The river gave him the creeps, but it enticed him as well. He remembered the dream. He had no idea how to relate to girls.

‘I don’t really know how to teach.’

‘You know how to ride, though.’

‘He was riding before he could walk,’ said Jean, emerging from the shed and closing the door behind her. ‘Will you stay and have a bit of dinner?’

‘No,’ said Jimmy. ‘Some other day I will.’ He turned towards his van, which was parked outside the gate. ‘Saturday morning, then?’

‘I suppose,’ said Michael.

‘Ten o’clock?’

He started the van before Michael could think of an excuse not to go.

‘That’s nice,’ said Jean.

‘Dad’ll be livid.’

Beside the hay shed, Frank was fiddling with an electric extension cord. Jean looked across at him. ‘I’ll fix your dad,’ she said.

Michael knew she would, too.

W
HEN HE GOT ON
the bus the next morning he knew he was in trouble. But it wasn’t until he walked into the classroom that it hit him. From every corner of the room voices jeered at him. Ghostly voices that whined and wavered. Old peoples voices that quivered and creaked. Voices that bleated like sheep.

‘Woe betide you. Woe betide you. Woe betide you.’ Michael turned round and went back out of the classroom. He walked down the corridor, ignoring the teacher who tried to stop him, and out of the school. He kept walking until he reached the edge of the town, then he hitched a lift back to the yard.

There was no one around. The lorry was gone. Michael mucked out all the boxes and swept the yard. After lunch he brought a mountain of tack into the cold sitting room and cleaned it all in front of the soaps on TV. After the six o’clock news he filled haynets and carried a bale out to the horses in the field, then came in and made a proper dinner. But his parents didn’t turn up to eat it. They didn’t get home until eleven o’clock that night. They had been to the sales, sold two horses, and bought three more.

The next day Michael stayed at home. His mother made half-hearted attempts to get him to school, but he ignored her. He was useful to them in the yard. With the best will in the world, it was difficult for them to object too strongly to him being there. Day drifted into day and still Michael didn’t return to school. As far as he was concerned, that part of his life was behind him.

H
E STARED INTO THE
darkness for hours on Friday night. He couldn’t remember the girl’s face at all, but he could still see the rings and studs; the criss-crossed scars on her arms. He could see the contempt in her eyes as well; the cynicism. It was something he recognized. It was something they shared.

He tried to bludgeon himself into sleep. He swore at himself; accused himself of cowardice. On difficult horses it always worked; it always made his fear die down, return to wherever it came from. But this time it didn’t work. Snatches of the song trespassed on his thoughts throughout the night, and when he did finally sleep they ran through his dreams as well. When he woke at first light there were fragments in his mind and he didn’t know whether they were remembered or fabricated by his dream self.

He has ridden o’er field and fen …

The sides are steep, the water’s deep …

The bonny grey mare …

The bonny grey mare.

It was a good enough morning. The cloud was low, but not quite low enough to be mist. There was a fine, persistent drizzle, but it wasn’t cold. There was no wind at all.

He had planned to take Horrocks and Bandit to the lesson. They were the quietest horses in the yard. He brushed them both till they shone, swearing and shoving at them in their cramped quarters, then tacked them up with the best bridles and the most comfortable saddles. Out in the yard Frank was hosing the leg of a young sport horse with a damaged tendon. He looked up briefly.

‘There’s a lad coming to look at some ponies,’ he said. ‘Three o’clock. You’ll be back?’

Michael nodded. He mounted Bandit and, leading Horrocks, clattered out of the yard and across the paddocks to the green lane. He tied Horrocks to a fence post and took Bandit over the gate first. The cob pricked his ears and lumbered into it willingly. In the lane Michael slipped off and tied him to a tree. Then he snapped off a stout hazel switch and went back for Horrocks. His neck was bristling; he was terrified that his father would see what was happening and come storming over to bawl him out of it. He jumped up onto Horrocks and gave him three hard thwacks on the rump. The horse woke up and cantered up to the gate with plenty of attention. But he stopped when he got there, and Michael was on his fourth attempt at it when he was, finally, rumbled.

‘What the hell do you think you’re doing?’ His father had walked out across the fields and was watching him.

Michael said nothing, but began to ride the horse rapidly back towards the yard.

‘You’ve just undone all the flaming work we’ve put into that flaming horse all week!’

Michael dismounted in the yard and ran up the ramp of the lorry, towing Horrocks behind him.

His father followed. ‘And what’s the other bugger doing left in the lane?’

Michael dragged the tack off the bay. ‘The gate’s wired up,’ he said.

‘Well unwire the flaming gate! Where are your brains, lad?’

Michael walked past him and into the dairy, where he exchanged the tack for a set that fitted the grey mare. Frank followed him to her makeshift box, in one of the narrow cow stalls in the byre.

‘And what are you doing taking her out? Didn’t I just tell you someone’s coming to look at ponies?’

‘She’ll be better for it,’ said Michael.

His father knew he was right. He strode away, still swearing aimlessly, back to his blocks and cement. Michael led the mare out, hosed the worst of the muck off her legs and jumped up. It wasn’t until he was well on his way down the green lane, with Bandit happily in tow, that he remembered the main reason he had decided not to take the mare in the first place. His feet reached to her knees. He looked like a fool.

T
HERE WAS NOBODY WAITING
for him at the end of the lane. He rode out past the farmhouse and the fork in the road, but there was no one waiting at the river either. For a few awful minutes he thought it was all a mistake. He had come on the wrong day. The man Souter had played a trick on him. The worst thought of all was that the whole thing was a product of his own mind; a florid fantasy, like the words of the song which kept creeping up on him, filling themselves in like a dot-to-dot picture.

Then the girl appeared, behind him.

‘You came,’ she said.

‘Why wouldn’t I come?’ he said.

She smiled and shrugged.

She was wearing faded black jeans, an anorak and wellies. She might have looked quite normal if it hadn’t been for all the hardware plumbed into her face. It hurt him just to look at her.

Jimmy was behind her, pushing her mother in the wheelchair. They were both smiling as if it was Christmas morning.

‘I can open the gate into the field there, if you want,’ said Jimmy. Michael looked where he pointed, into a flat green pasture. But the mare was already beginning to shift and fuss.

‘I think we might be better on the roads the first day,’ he said. ‘Just till …’ He felt himself colour. He didn’t want to say ‘she’, and he didn’t want to say ‘Annie’. Instead he turned to her. ‘Until you get used to the feel of the horse.’