Blind Beauty (18 page)

For a brief moment Tessa was roused out of her lethargy to wish – fiercely – that she could go with him. The sound of the crowd, the smell of sweaty horse and damp leather… Tom's gaunt face was suddenly so dear, remembering him sliding off Buffoon on the hoof-scarred Aintree turf. Tears pricked her eyes and she turned away and looked out of the window.

Tom said softly, “Don't do this to yourself, Tessa. We want you back.”

“Oh Tom!” she wailed. The tears streamed down her cheeks. She turned towards him and he came over to her and put his arms round her and she buried her face in his chest. It smelled of horse sweat. It was wonderful to be held in such a strong grasp, so foreign to her nature, but so comforting. It felt like opening up a great crack in her shell, a mortal surrender.

At this point Ma opened the door to issue in another visitor for somebody else, but when she saw what was happening she withdrew quickly and closed the door silently behind her, taking the visitor to another room. Tessa behaving like a human being was what she was always praying for. Might this be the breakthrough they were all hoping for?

When he departed, she had a close look at the young man who had effected this surprising breakdown.

“You look familiar. Should I know you?”

“Only if you're a racing fan. I'm a jockey. Tom Bryant.”

“Ah yes. That's it. Mrs Alston said she would contact you. I remember now.”

“I rode the horse she looked after. The one all the trouble was over.”

That made sense to Ma. How lovely if this young man could deliver Tessa from her living death.

“Will you come again? You seem to have got through to her. We're worried about her here, you know.”

“I'll try.”

“I know you lead a very busy life, but no one else has got her to cry before.”

“It seems strange that crying is a good sign.”

“Oh yes. She's like stone. But stones don't cry. Please come again.”

“Yes. I'll try.”

“You will.”

Tom was taken aback by the look in Ma's eye. He went away, disturbed by what had happened. Tessa's steely, impenetratable armour – had he dented it? It was only via the horse she had loved, suffered, known joy and sorrow like a normal person. He guessed that what she really needed to come alive again was Buffoon back, but life did not work that way. Everyone knew that racehorses came and went at the whim of their owners, not to satisfy the wishes of their devoted carers. And Buffoon – Tom hadn't heard of him since the Grand National. He enquired after him, but Peter Fellowes had no idea where he had gone.

“He'll be dead by now, like as not. A bad business all round. I hope Morrison gets his just deserts one day.”

“He's lost a lot of money lately.”

“Good.”

Tom had lost his retainer with Raleigh through refusing to ride Maurice's horses but was not short of offers to ride for just about everyone else. It was hard to slot in visits to Tessa. Luck had been running his way, and he was ten wins ahead of the field towards the end of the season, on the verge of becoming champion jockey.

One morning he rang Tessa's place and asked to speak to her. He told her he would visit after the day's racing. It was to pin himself down, otherwise, without the promise, he knew he would go on putting it off. It was hard enough to fit in everything necessary for his work without sick-visiting, or whatever the equivalent was. Prison-visiting, he supposed, with a dart of surprise. Tessa was as unlike a criminal as anyone he had met. But there had been gruesome stories of the damage she had wreaked on her stepfather that night at Goldlands. The hospital helicopter had winged in while Lucky was still bellowing to be let in down at the farm gate. What goings-on in the sleepy valley!

He went to work and rode five races. Weighing out for the last, he could not help looking forward to the end of the season and a bit of a rest. His body felt parched and strung-up, his nerves twitchy. His last horse did not inspire him with confidence either, a confirmed tearaway which fell frequently but nearly always won if it kept on its feet. With luck this was one of its winning days.

“Let him go, if that's what he wants. It's safer that way,” the trainer said. “You can't say he hasn't got the appetite for the job!”

True – just hang on. It wasn't the sort of ride where you had to work for every metre, and come home exhausted. The horse was a character and a favourite with the crowd for its quirky enthusiasm.

The spring shadows lay long across the grass, the low sun making visibility very bad as the course swung round into the West. Maybe that was what caused it. Tom remembered squinting up through his darkened goggles at the black bank of brush looming against a scarlet sky, giving the horse his office to take off, and then the jump coming at him in a most extraordinary fashion, not swinging happily below, but apparently crashing down on his head. He couldn't understand it, nor did he have the chance to wonder what had happened for a very long time.

 

Tessa had no visitor that night.

Ma was angry, until she read the papers in the morning, and then she understood.

She took the paper with her to Tessa's room and said, “I'm afraid it's not very good news – why your jockey friend didn't turn up last night.”

Tessa read the paragraph Ma was pointing at: “Leading jockey seriously injured in last fence fall.”

“It doesn't sound too good.”

Tessa made a little moaning noise and snatched the paper off Ma. She read: “Tom Bryant is still in a coma this morning after a horrific fall from erratic jumper, Country Cousin. The horse appeared not to take off, ploughing into the bottom of the jump, bringing down the horse behind it which fell on Bryant. Bryant sustained severe injuries to his back and head, and is said to be in a critical condition this morning.”

Tessa went white and started to shake.

“Not Tom! Oh, no!” She leapt up and shrieked out, “I must see him! I must go!”

“Tessa, dear, he's in a coma, it says. I shall get you permission to visit him when the time is right. But not yet.”

“Oh Tom! Oh Tom!”

Tessa sat on the bed with her head in her hands, rocking backwards and forwards. Ma watched her curiously, pleased to see this response. Tom, having been the first to crack the stone defence, was now, by default, the cause of the crack widening.

“Hush, my dear, I'm sure he'll survive. They are so skilled today with these injuries. I will ring, if you want, and ask about him.”

“Oh please! Please!”

Tess could feel the almost forgotten surge of adrenalin coursing through her miserable system. Seeing Tom again had cut into her lethargy, reminding her that the world was still going on out there. And now this shock – she could not pretend any more that she didn't care what happened.

Sarah kept her informed. She called with Gilly in the evening, and they told her Tom was in a bad way, but not going to die.

“I'm going to see him! Ma says I can go. She's going to arrange it.”

They were surprised. Going home, Sarah said, “He's done her a good turn, getting half-killed. She's unfrozen.”

“Poor old Tom. There must have been easier ways!”

“He visited her when she was down. She remembers that. It's crazy to keep her in that place, it's killing her.”

“It would kill me!”

Ma kept her word, and ten days later drove Tessa to visit Tom in her own car. There was a stern lecture about trust, and no monkey business – “Because it will be me that will be in trouble, not you,” Ma said. “And I'm sure you wouldn't like that!”

“Wouldn't I?” Tessa said, and smiled.

Ma nearly drove into the ditch.

 

It wasn't easy for Tessa, visiting Tom.

Tom had always inferred that, when a jockey was down, he needed the support of his jockey friends, still out there. But Tessa knew she wasn't the sort of jockey Tom meant, to go visiting a fellow, she being at the bottom of the pile and he at the top. She was very sensitive to this knowledge. It was more for herself that she was visiting him, because she needed him, more than vice versa. So it was with trepidation that she walked with Ma through the long white corridors of the hospital, up in the lift, more doors, wards, getting ever more frightened. She stopped at one point, and said she wanted to go back.

“Don't be silly,” Ma said abruptly.

Tom was in a room alone, lying down. His head was swathed in bandages and he looked as white as his pillow. He looked awful.

“You look awful,” Tessa said.

He smiled. “That's what I said to you, isn't it?”

“Start again,” said Ma. “Hullo, Tom. How lovely to see you. I've brought you some flowers.”

She had too, having bought them from a stall at the hospital entrance. She held the bunch out to Tessa. Tessa took them and smiled.

“Hullo, Tom. How are you? I've brought you some flowers.”

“That's better,” Ma said. “Give them back to me and I'll go and find a vase for them.”

She went out and shut the door behind her.

“There,” said Tom. “You could escape now. Tie my sheets together and shin out of the window. I thought she would handcuff you to the bed.”

“I don't want to go.”

“You ought to want, Tessa. Not out of the window, of course, but work at it. Get out. Do you think I'm going to lie here and give up? It's the same thing.”

“Be a jockey? Get half-killed, like you?”

“Yeah. I'm no advertisement at the moment, but I'm improving. I'll be back next season.”

“Does it hurt?”

“Yeah, it hurts all right. Better for seeing you though.”

“I was scared of coming.”

“Why scared?”

“Well, I'm not…”

No words to say what she was not. She was nothing, wiped out.

“Tessa.” Tom put out a hand. She sat on the bed, near the hand, looking at it. Those long, strong fingers, on the reins to Buffoon's stubborn mouth… Buffoon never put a foot wrong, not like her. She remembered the euphoria.

“Get moving, Tessa. That's all. Come out of it. It's like you've had a horse fall on you as well. If I can make it, you can too. It's just making the effort. It's really tough, but you've got to.”

He was remembering Ma's hard eyes, boring into him, saying, “You will.” He was doing as he was told. Perhaps he should have Ma to help him get going too. He needed all the help he could get. More than he could say to Tessa. Even the effort to say this was hurting. God, it hurt – his brain hurt!

When Ma came back Tom was asleep and Tessa lay beside him on the bed, holding his hand.

B
uffoon, against all the odds, was not dead. Not quite.

He had returned home after the Grand National tired, hurting, to his empty stable. They had done everything possible to make him comfortable, but he was unhappy, strung up, disturbed. He blundered round his straw bed, ignored the goodies in his manger, stared with difficulty across the yard to the dark gateway where Lucky should have been waiting for him and wasn't. He had no thoughts. But he wasn't happy.

Later, amazingly, he heard Lucky's voice at the far gate out to the valley.

He put his head over the door and roared back. Lights went on everywhere and they all came running, shouting and laughing. Lucky came bolting down the yard, kicking and bucking, and stopped at Buffoon's door. Buffoon put his head down, whickering deeply in his throat, Lucky was let in, and both of them settled down immediately, Buffoon going to the manger to finish up his feed and Lucky tugging greedily at the big haynet.

“Wherever did he come from?” they exclaimed.

“Tessa will be over the moon when she comes back!”

“Where is she?”

And of the disturbance that occupied the valley for what seemed the rest of the night Buffoon and Lucky took no notice, totally occupied with eating. And then sleeping, lying side by side as usual. Both perfectly contented.

Buffoon did sense that there was a very strange atmosphere in the yard the next day but, with Lucky back, it did not matter to him. He was eating up and had already lost the gaunt look that had so disturbed the betting public. He missed Tessa and whinnied for her once or twice, but Wisbey fed him and all was well.

Wisbey was muttering strange oaths. “A
carving knife
, by gum! It could well have been one of us!” he said to Gilly, and Gilly said, “Might have been you, you asked for it sometimes, you ape.”

“I'll be damned careful when she comes back, I can tell you.”

“She won't be coming back, will she?”

Buffoon, if he had understood this, would have been sorry. He trusted Tessa and would do whatever she wanted of him, however stupid. But in a few days he almost perceptibly put on weight and bloom. In spite of being lame with a damaged tendon, he began to look like his old self.

But Tessa didn't come back.

The horse did not know what events were taking place around him. There was no way of telling him, when he was sent to the sales, that it was through no fault of his own. He was being dumped, yet he had given his all. He did not understand this, he did not feel bitterness nor indignation at his lot, merely bewilderment. He was sent to the sale ring with Wisbey as groom, and Lucky still as his companion. The stables were strange but he was comfortable, happy even. It was like going racing, and he expected to be asked to race, in spite of having a bad leg. He was used to being asked to do these inexplicable things. But instead of being asked to race he was sent into a round building and led in circles by Wisbey while a man droned on over a loudspeaker and eventually dropped a hammer on his desk which made Buffoon jump. He was then led outside and a long conversation took place between Wisbey and another man.

Buffoon could tell Wisbey was cross with the man. He didn't know it but the man was refusing to take Lucky too and Wisbey was trying to persuade him otherwise.

“I'm a dealer, not a philanthropist,” the man said. “The horse'll get over it. They always do.”

Wisbey knew this was true, in the end, but his heart was full of pity for the poor old horse going to this crook dealer. Better they had shot him and given the creditors the carcass money, as he told Peter bitterly when he got home. It was a bad evening back at Sparrows Wyck, where Lucky spent the night whinnying, just as Buffoon had a few weeks before.

A bad evening too for Buffoon, transported to a strange stable without Lucky, without anyone he knew. He was totally bewildered. He expected to go home, like after a race, but the horsebox, coming and going during the following days, never waited for him, although he whinnied after it every time it left the yard. He found it hard to see too well where he was, only that it smelled strange and Lucky was nowhere to be seen. He did not recognize the voices of anyone around him, nor the smells of the place, nor the nip in the air. He did not know why he never went out any more. He stopped whinnying after a bit, and they cut his feed down while he was in “box-rest”, to mend his leg, so he became dull and bored. Not exactly miserable, but without any of his old zest. His coat was dull and his eyes duller and he stood dully on three legs, his nose in a corner.

In the autumn Buffoon was no longer lame and was advertised for sale. He was cheap. No vet would pass him because of his bad sight and dicey legs.

He needed another year off to cure his leg and an operation for cataracts to cure his eyes, both of which the dealer could not afford.

“I'm in it for a living, for Gawd's sake,” he said. He did not dare say he was looking for a mug to buy a useless horse like Buffoon. He had bought him at the sale specifically for a customer who had fancied owning a famous horse, but the sale had foundered, as so many did, and the dealer now only wanted his money back. He knew he wouldn't get it. Memories were short where fame was concerned. He was now just selling an ex-racehorse cheap because he was so ugly. Anyone who asked for a vet's certificate would be fobbed off.

The mug, in the shape of an ignorant but ambitious man called Campbell, duly came along and took the horse away for his daughter to event.

At last it was Buffoon's turn to be loaded into the horsebox. He went in eagerly, pricking his ears. Memories of journeys to a racecourse lightened his step. He remembered going home, and the security of his old box with Lucky and the half-forgotten voices. That girl who used to hug and kiss him… he gave a little whicker as they tied him up, and the lad laughed and said, “Thinks he's going to Aintree again, poor old beggar.”

“Knacker's'll be the next journey, when they've found out he can't see.”

But when he was led out at the other end, there was no racecourse bustle, no familiar voices, no Lucky. Just a single loosebox at the end of a small field, no other horse in sight. A straw bed and feed were waiting, and a skinny girl fussed about, but didn't seem to know anything. The straw was thin, the feed small, the hay poor. Buffoon's step dragged and he did not even raise an enquiring whinny.

The Campbell family, parents and girl, had coped with Pony Club but knew nothing about seventeen-hand thoroughbreds. They thought they were kind and knowledgeable. They knew you fed hay and cubes and mix, but not how much; they didn't know good hay from bad and bought at a “bargain” price; their farrier was cheap and incompetent, their field ill-drained with more weeds than grass. Buffoon ate it up in a week and when it rained it turned into a patch of mud. He stood in it all day and got mud-fever. His legs swelled up and grew red scabs. The Campbells were told to keep him in, so he stood in the small stable without exercise for several weeks and grew weary and gaunt. He wasn't used to living alone. He had never in his life been without company. There had always been a yard of horses, even without Lucky. He didn't like this dreary existence but he accepted it, as horses accept nearly everything.

They don't understand they are being ill-treated. They only know they are hungry, or in pain, or miserable, but they accept it. They don't ask why or how long for. They don't wonder what is going to happen to them.

Buffoon just stood looking at the wall, waiting for another small feed, tired of his unpalatable hay. He had memories, but they didn't surface often. Sometimes the sound of a lorry on the road made him prick his ears, and he remembered the racecourses and the excitement and lifted his head for a few minutes. But nothing happened and soon a fly bit him and he scratched, and let out a gusty sigh. If he had heard Tessa's voice again, he would have gone eagerly and looked out and whinnied. He remembered the timbre of her voice. If Lucky had come he would have whinnied. Even Wisbey. But he did not like his new people much. They did not understand what he wanted, although they thought they were kind. They patted him sometimes but did nothing to make him happy.

But when summer came round again and his legs cleared up the girl started to ride him out and take him to a few cross-countries. When Buffoon saw the jumps he raced at them in the way he was used to, but the girl pulled him back, wanting him to go more slowly. He couldn't understand it. The girl had a few lessons, and Buffoon learned that he had to jump, but slowly. Very odd. But he was on his own, not in a herd as he was used to, and it wasn't so much fun. In fact, as he had no neighbours taking off at the same time, he often found it hard to know when to take off, the jump ahead being just a dark blur in his vision. He did his best but often blundered. The girl lost her temper and hit him. He had no idea what for. He had rarely been hit, only sometimes in the heat of racing and then he had never felt it. He found life puzzling, and lost confidence. It was often better to stop than try to find his way ahead. Then the girl got furious and hit him a lot more.

“That poor old nag of the Campbells looks really miserable,” they remarked at the Hunter Trials. “They've no idea…”

“I think it's half-blind. I told them to get the vet to have a look, but Campbell just laughed at me.”

“It's dangerous – he ought to know – putting his girl up on a blind horse.”

“Well, there he goes… hope they come back in one piece.”

The ugly chestnut horse lolloped off into the country. He cleared the first island jump standing in the field and disappeared into a wood. Not long afterwards there was a message on the walkie-talkie for the ambulance.

“Don't start another rider. Spot of trouble up here.”

It took quite a time. The ambulance took the rider away and eventually Campbell came back down to the start leading a lame chestnut horse.

“Bloody thing never even took off! Just went straight through it, turned a complete somersault. She's broken her leg.”

“Lucky it wasn't her neck. That horse is dangerous, Campbell. Get the vet to it – it's blind.”

“Heck. If it's blind, what good is it?”

“I'd put it down if I were you. Kindest.”

“The girl'll go potty if he's put down! She loves it.”

(“Blow me, I'd never have guessed!” – but the thought was not expressed aloud.)

“Well, don't let her get back on. Too risky by far.”

“What shall I do? I've no time to look after it, and now the girl's got a broken leg…”

“Put him out to grass for the time being then. Give you time to think. Get a vet –”

“Vets cost a fortune! I haven't got that sort of money.”

He went blundering off and the men he had been talking to shook their heads over his ignorance.

Campbell didn't think he was cruel.

But he found a field for Buffoon out in the country with lots of grass and an automatic trough. That was kind, wasn't it? Horses liked lots of grass. Buffoon was turned out alone, and left. The field was large, on the side of a hill, surrounded by prairie fields of corn. Over the summer machinery came and went, and in the autumn the fields were ploughed, drilled and sown, and left. There was a thin hedge round Buffoon's field, not enough to give any shade, nor was it thick enough to give shelter from the cold winds from the North Sea that started to blow in as winter approached. Nobody came near nor by. A minor road led past the gate and sometimes a car went past, very occasionally a lorry. At the sound of a lorry Buffoon would lift his heavy head and prick his ears for a few moments, but the lorries never stopped. That was the only sign of life. Nobody came. It made him anxious. He limped up and down by the hedge where the gate was, wanting to be taken in, but nobody came. He whinnied, but there was no answer. Nobody came.

The horse had grass, water, freedom… Campbell was content.

And as winter progressed Buffoon lost hope and stood tucked into the thickest bit of hedge, his scrawny tail clamped down over his quarters. His ribs stood out like the shell of a rotting boat. His winter coat was too thin to give him warmth. Long shivers convulsed his frame when the wind blew.

Campbell would have been amazed if anyone had accused him of cruelty.