Longshot (13 page)

“Gareth!” Mackie said, disgusted.

“Well, that’s what it says. ‘Urine is sterile and cannot cause diseases. Boil it and condense the steam, which will then be pure distilled water, perfectly safe to drink.”’

“John, really!” Mackie protested.

“It’s true,” I said, smiling. “Lack of water is a terrible killer. If you’ve a fire but no water, you now know what to do.”

“I couldn’t.”

“Survival is a frame of mind,” Tremayne repeated. “You never know what you could do until you had to.”

Perkin asked me, “Have you ever drunk it?”

“Distilled water?”

“You know what I mean.”

I nodded. “Yes, I have. To test it for the books. And I’ve distilled all sorts of other things too. Filthy jungle water. Wet mud. Seawater, particularly. If the starter liquid is watery and not fermenting, the steam is pure H
₂
O. And when seawater boils dry you have salt left, which is useful.”

“What if the starter liquid is fermenting?” Gareth asked.

“The steam is alcohol.”

“Oh, yes, I’m supposed to have learned that in school.”

“Gin and tonic in the wilderness?” Tremayne suggested.

I said with enjoyment, “I could certainly get you drunk in the wilderness, but actual gin would depend on juniper bushes, and tonic on chinchona trees for quinine, and I don’t think they’d both grow in the same place, but you never know.” I paused. “Ice cubes might be a problem in the rain forest.”

Tremayne laughed deep in his chest. “Did you ever rely on all this stuff to save your life?”

“Not entirely,” I said. “I lived by these techniques for weeks at a time, but someone always knew roughly where I was. I had escape routes. I was basically testing what was practicable and possible and sensible in each area where the agency wanted to set up adventure holidays. I’ve never had to survive after a plane crash in the mountains, for instance.”

There had been a plane crash in the Andes in 1972 when people had eaten other people in order to stay alive. I didn’t think I would tell Mackie, though.

“But,” she said, “did things ever go wrong?”

“Sometimes.”

“Like what? Do say.”

“Well ... like insect bites and eating things that disagreed with me.”

They all looked as if these were everyday affairs, but I’d been too ill a couple of times to care to remember.

I said with equal truth but more drama, “A bear smashed up my camp in Canada once and hung around it for days. I couldn’t reach anything I needed. It was a shade fraught there for a bit.”

“Do you mean it?” Gareth was openmouthed.

“Nothing happened,” I said. “The bear went away.”

“Weren’t you afraid he would come back?”

“I packed up and moved somewhere else.”

“Wow,” Gareth said.

“Bears eat people,” his brother told him repressively. “Don’t get any ideas about copying John.”

Tremayne looked at his sons mildly. “Have either of you ever heard of vicarious enjoyment?”

“No,” Gareth said. “What is it?”

“Dreaming,” Mackie suggested.

Perkin said, “Someone else does the suffering for you.”

“Let Gareth dream,” Tremayne said, nodding. “It’s natural. I don’t suppose for one moment he’ll go chasing bears.”

“Boys do stupid things, Gareth included.”

“Hey,” his brother protested. “Who’s talking? Who climbed onto the roof and couldn’t get down?”

“Shut your face,” Perkin said.

“Do give it a rest, you two,” Mackie said wearily. “Why do you always quarrel?”

“We’re nothing compared with Lewis and Nolan,” Perkin said. “They can get really vicious.”

Mackie said reflectively, “They haven’t quarreled since Olympia died.”

“Not in front of us,” her husband agreed, “but you don’t know what they’ve said in private.”

Diffidently, because it wasn’t really my business, I asked, “Why do they quarrel?”

“Why does anyone?” Tremayne said. “But those two envy each other. You met them last night, didn’t you? Nolan has the looks and the dash, Lewis is a drunk with brains. Nolan has courage and is thick, Lewis is a physical disaster but when he’s sober he’s a whiz at making money. Nolan is a crack shot, Lewis misses every pheasant he aims at. Lewis would like to be the glamorous amateur jockey and Nolan would like to be upwardly disgustingly rich. Neither will ever manage it, but that doesn’t stop the envy.”

“You’re too hard on them,” Mackie murmured.

“But you know I’m right.”

She didn’t deny it, but said, “Perhaps the Olympia business has drawn them together.”

“You’re a sweet young woman,” Tremayne told her. “You see good in everyone.”

Perkin said, “Hands off my wife” in what might or might not have been a joke. Tremayne chose to take it lightly, and I thought he must be well used to his son’s acute possessiveness.

He turned from Perkin to me and with a swift change of subject said, “How well do you ride?”

“Er . . .” I said. “I haven’t ridden a racehorse.”

“What then?”

“Hacks, dude-ranch horses, pony trekking, Arab horses in the desert.”

“Hm.” He pondered. “Care to ride my hack with the string in the morning? Let’s see what you can do.”

“OK.” I must have sounded halfhearted, because he pounced on it.

“Don’t you want to?” he demanded.

“Yes, please.”

“Right, then,” he nodded. “Mackie, tell Bob to have Touchy saddled up for John, if you’re out in the yard before me.”

“Right.”

“Touchy won the Cheltenham Gold Cup,” Gareth told me.

“Oh, did he?” Some hack.

“Don’t worry,” Mackie said, smiling, “he’s fifteen now and almost a gentleman.”

“Dumps people regularly on Fridays,” Gareth said.

WITH APPREHENSION I went out into the yard on the following morning, Friday, in jodhpurs, boots, ski jacket and gloves. I hadn’t sat on a horse of any sort for almost two years and, whatever Mackie might say, my idea of a nice quiet return to the saddle wasn’t a star steeplechaser, pensioned or not.

Touchy was big, with bulging muscles; he would have to be, I supposed, to carry Tremayne’s weight. Bob Watson gave me a grin, a helmet and a leg-up, and it seemed a fair way down to the ground.

Oh, well, I thought. Enjoy it. I’d said I could ride: time to try and prove it. Tremayne, watching me appraisingly with his head on one side, told me to take my place behind Mackie, who would be leading the string. He himself would be driving the tractor. I could take Touchy up the all-weather gallop at a fast canter when everyone else had worked.

“All right,” I said.

He smiled faintly and walked away and I collected the reins and a few thoughts and tried not to make a fool of myself.

Bob Watson appeared again at my elbow.

“Get him anchored when you set off up the gallop,” he said, “or he’ll pull your arms out.”

“Thanks,” I said, but he had already moved on.

“All out,” he was saying, and out they all came from the boxes, circling in the lights, breathing plumes, moving in circles as Bob threw the lads up, all as before, only now I was part of it, now on the canvas in the picture, as if alive in a Munnings painting, extraordinary.

I followed Mackie out of the yard and across the road and onto the downland track, and found that Touchy knew what to do from long experience but would respond better to pressure with the calf rather than to strong pulls on his tough old mouth.

Mackie looked back a few times as if to make sure I hadn’t evaporated and watched while I circled with the others as it grew light and we waited for Tremayne to reach the top of the hill.

Drifting alongside, she asked, “Where did you learn to ride?”

“Mexico,” I said.

“You were taught by a Spaniard!”

“Yes, I was.”

“And he had you riding with your arms folded?”

“Yes, how do you know?”

“I thought so. Well, tuck your elbows in on old Touchy.”

“Thanks.’

She smiled and went off to oversee the dividing of the string into twos or threes for the gallops.

Snow still lay thinly over everything and it was another clear morning, stingingly, beautifully cold. January dawn on the Downs; once felt, never forgotten.

Section by section the string set off up the wood-chippings track until only Mackie and I were left.

“I’ll ride on the right of you,” she said, coming up behind me. “Then Tremayne can see how you ride.”

“Thanks very much,” I said ironically.

“You’ll do all right.”

She swayed suddenly in the saddle and I put out a hand to steady her.

“Are you OK?” I asked anxiously. “You should have rested more after that bang on the head.” She was pale. Huge-eyed. Alarming.

“No . . . I . . .” She took an unsteady breath. “I just felt ... oh . . . oh . . .”

She swayed again and looked near to fainting. I leaned across and put my right arm around her waist, holding her tight to prevent her falling. Her weight sagged against me limply until I was supporting her entirely, and since she had an arm through her reins her horse was held close to mine, their heads almost touching.

I took hold of her reins in my left hand and simply held her tight with my right, and her horse moved his rump sideways away from me until she slid off out of her saddle altogether and finished half lying across my knee and Touchy’s withers, held only by my grasp.

I couldn’t let her fall and I couldn’t dismount without dropping her, so with both hands I pulled and heaved her up onto Touchy until she was half sitting and half lying across the front of my saddle, held in my arms. Touchy didn’t much like it and Mackie’s horse had backed away sharply to the length of his reins and was on the edge of bolting, and I began to wonder if I should just let him go free in spite of the icy dangers everywhere lurking. I might then manage to walk Touchy back to the stable with his double cargo and we might yet not have a worse disaster than Mackie’s unconsciousness. The urgency of getting help for her made more things possible than I could have thought.

Touchy got an unmistakable signal from my leg and obediently turned towards home. I decided I would hold on to Mackie’s horse as long as it would come too, and as if by magic he got the going-home message and decided not to object any further.

We had gone perhaps three paces in this fashion when Mackie woke up and came to full consciousness as if a light had been switched on.

“What happened . . .?”

“You fainted. Fell this way.”

“I can’t have done.” But she could see that she must have. “Let me down,” she said. “I feel awfully sick.”

“Can you stand?” I asked worriedly. “Let me take you home like this.”

“No.” She rolled against me onto her stomach and slid down slowly until her feet were on the ground. “What a stupid thing to do,” she said. “I’m all right now, I am really. Give me my reins.”

“Mackie . . .”

She turned away from me suddenly and vomited convulsively onto the snow.

I hopped down off Touchy with the reins of both horses held fast and tried to help her.

“God,” she said weakly, searching for a tissue, “must have eaten something.”

“Not my cooking.”

“No.” She found the tissue and smiled a fraction. She and Perkin hadn’t stayed for the previous evening’s grilled chicken. “I haven’t felt well for days.”

“Concussion,” I said.

“No, even before that. Tension over the trial, I suppose.” She took a few deep breaths and blew her nose. “I feel perfectly all right now. I don’t understand it.”

She was looking at me in puzzlement, and I quite clearly saw the thought float into her head and transfigure her face into wonderment and hope ... and joy.

“Oh!” she said ecstatically. “Do you think ... I mean, I’ve been feeling sick every morning this week ... and after two years of trying I’d stopped expecting anything to happen, and anyway, I didn’t know it could make you feel so ill right at the beginning ... I mean, I didn’t even
suspect . . .
I’m always wildly irregular.” She stopped and laughed. “Don’t tell Tremayne. Don’t tell Perkin. I’ll wait a bit first, to make sure. But I
am
sure. It explains all sorts of odd things that have happened this last week. Like my nipples itching. My hormones must be rioting. I can’t believe it. I think I’ll burst.”

I thought that I had never before seen such pure uncomplicated happiness in anyone, and was tremendously glad for her.

“What a revelation!” she said. “Like an angel announcing it ... if that’s not blasphemous.”

“Don’t hope too much,” I said cautiously.

“Don’t be silly. I
know
.” She seemed to wake suddenly to our whereabouts. “Tremayne will be going mad because we haven’t appeared.”

“I’ll ride up and tell him you’re not well and have gone home.”