Seahorse (31 page)

I began to relax, my posture loosening. This is why I'd agreed. I enjoyed it greatly. Out in the open, the air stinging my face. A sense of delicate balance, poised carefully at the top. The sudden, uplifting freedom.

“Careful,” said Philip. “Move your calves closer to Lady's side.”

“Yes… sorry…”

In the daylight, Philip's features were less complex, flattened, bereft of shadows. I was wrong when I'd called him an elderly Hercules that first evening. He was wholly, utterly, human. Not a sculptural force carved with the vigour and resplendence of a god. But something pettier, more paltry, more real.

I glanced at him—the strong nose, the oddly delicate mouth.

In winter, the birds are silent.

Finally the path broadened and we could ride side by side.

“So, Myra says you're staying on… for Christmas.”

I tightened my grip on the reins, wondering which direction this would take. “She's been very kind… and asked if I'd like to stay on…”

Philip laughed; it didn't sound as though he was amused.

“Of course, if you'd prefer—” I began.

“There are many other things I'd prefer, but it's not always the way life pans out, is it?”

“I don't know what you think may happen… what this great wave of
generosity may bring to you… but it will not be my daughter.”

“I'm afraid—”

“That it's none of my business? She made it my business when she showed up eight months pregnant at my door like a common….”
Slut.
He didn't need to say the word.

Lady was moving faster, as though she'd sensed it, the frisson running along my back.

“My grandson has a father she can't even name.”

She hadn't told him. Nicholas.

“I've put her back on her feet… do you know how long that takes? To put a person back together?”

I glanced down, the ground seemed liquid and far away.

Into a mold that should not contain her… perhaps that's why people break apart in the first place. That's why they found places that were dungeons of secrets.

“And now you come waltzing in here,” Philip was speaking in a steely, steady tone. “thinking you can fuck her to happiness.”

The word hung in the air, crystallized like a snowflake.

I don't think I imagined it, the trace of disgust in his voice. I struggled to stay calm, but it seeped into my throat, a seething anger—“It isn't as though Myra has no agency, no will of her own. She—”

“I don't think—”

“I don't think you understand me. You've had your little holiday, your trip to the moors, your bit of pre-Christmas snow, your fun with my daughter, and now… it's very simple really… it
ends.
Let me ask you again… are you staying on for Christmas?”

The track had taken us to the other side of the field, where instead of the wall ran a length of barbed wire fencing, and beyond that a road.

If I looked down, I knew I would fall. Lady had broken into a canter. General had no trouble keeping up.

I tried to steady my hands, but they burned, like the rest of me, with
a strange heat.

“Perhaps you should tell Myra.”

For a moment, Philip seemed confused, but it was swiftly replaced by annoyance. “What do you mean?”

“Perhaps you should tell her what makes you this way. So…
wretched
.”

My host was silent, out of confusion or anger or surprise, I couldn't tell. I continued, “The day I arrived, I stood by the fireplace in the drawing room… and looked at your photograph… and then you walked in, we talked and had a drink. And over and over again, I was thinking, I've seen him somewhere before… When I told Myra this, she dismissed it, saying you hardly left this house, except to go riding… or to London.”

“I don't have time for this nonsense. I asked you—”

“Sweet Saturdays… I saw you there.”

The mud and stone crunched, brittle under the horses' hooves.

Philip's voice was scornful. “I haven't the faintest idea what you're talking about.”

“I usually get up for a glass of water at night… did you know I can see your window from the loft? And there it was, through the gap in the curtains… the same profile. I saw you there…”

“This is absurd.”

“You won't even admit it to yourself, will you? You keep Myra caged in this house… just as you keep yourself trapped in that dungeon…”

With an instinct I didn't know I possessed, I turned, just in time to dodge Philip's hand.

It was a glimpse, of something on his face, a mass of distorted flesh that warned me of what would happen next.

“Stop—” I shouted, but Philip lunged again, this time his fingers grasping my jacket. I pulled away, kicking, and leaned forward, lifting myself from Lady, bringing up my hands, shortening the reins. It took another kick for the horse to gallop; I struggled to steer her off the path and onto the field. I'd done this rarely, I could barely hang on, her movements
uneven, accelerating. General was catching up, keeping pace. When I glanced back, it was still there, that look on Philip's face. I almost slipped off; I tried to lean forward further, clutching now at Lady's mane. Philip needn't catch me; at any moment, I'd fall and be crushed.

His horse was closer now—I felt the first push, as General galloped into me broadside. Somehow, I managed to stay on.

A second push almost threw me off.

He's mad… I remember thinking… he's mad…

Then, all of a sudden, the world swirled before me, in a cold and endless rush. I didn't know whether it was real or if I was dreaming, sailing through the air for an infinite moment, as though we were flying, or falling. And then a merciful slowing, a loping, a canter, and then a trot. I opened my eyes. I tightened the reins, my breath coming in short, sharp bursts. Despite the cold, sweat filmed my face, my hands.

Lady had almost come to a complete stop.

I dismounted, sinking to the ground. My legs were air. The soil smelled sweet and grassy.

Only then did I hear the whinnying behind me. I glanced back.

In the distance, behind us, General moved restlessly; Philip was lying on the ground.

Slowly, I edged closer; I recognized what it was, the feeling of infinite suspension, Lady had jumped a ditch, but General had halted, abruptly, and thrown his rider off.

He was still alive when we reached the hospital.

I'd left my cell phone back in the loft, out of signal, out of battery, so I stood by the road, waiting, wondering if I should attempt to find the nearest farmhouse, a neighboring cottage. Or my way back to Wintervale?

Although I couldn't possibly leave Philip alone. I've never been adequately competent in the face of emergencies; the time I discovered
Nicholas' disappearance, I sat, paralyzed, in the veranda.

Behind me, some distance away, Philip lay on the ground, unconscious, fallen at an awkward angle. Had I read somewhere that an injured party must not be moved? Or did that pertain to about murder victims, a crime scene? I'd edged around him, watching the rise and fall of his chest; the trickling dark stain spreading down his temple.

It rose swiftly, the dark, wide wings of panic.

Yet in answer to a silent plea, a car approached down the narrow country lane; I stepped out and hailed it, waving my hands. The vehicle rumbled to a stop, gravel spitting under its wheels. The couple inside, fair-haired, middle-aged, well-spoken, were assiduously concerned.

“Please…” I asked, “may I use your phone?”

I didn't realize it until I tried to punch in the numbers, that my hands were trembling.

“Emergency, which service do you require? Fire, Police or Ambulance?”

After that, the questions were numerous—which number was I calling from? What was my exact location? With the couple's help, I stumbled through the answers. The ambulance was dispatched and mobile, but I was asked to stay on the line.

“Sir, how many people are involved?”

“One… two… no, one, I'm unharmed.”

“What's the age of the patient?”

“About… late sixties… early seventies…”

“Is he breathing?”

Yes, he was breathing.

“Is he bleeding?”

Yes, on his head, slightly. From a surface wound.

Don't move him. Keep him warm.

The lady in the car pulled out a picnic blanket—indecorous in red and white chequered cheerfulness—and laid it over Philip. We pressed
her hanky, piteously insufficient, against the cut. We waited, watching, as instructed, for any changes; his breathing, I was convinced, was growing considerably more rapid and shallow.

Finally, the ambulance arrived, along with a police car.

The medical team was small, a paramedic and her assistant, yet briskly efficient. All at once, Philip was monitored, tubed, and braced, his neck wrapped in a cervical support, then carefully lifted and strapped onto a stretcher. The last I saw of him, the familiar outline of his profile, his forehead, the slope of his nose, his mouth, suddenly bereft of all emotion, of everything that had animated them, seemingly moments ago.

Before accompanying the two sombre-faced police officers, I bid a hasty thanks and farewell to the couple. Only when we drove off, me in the backseat, did I realize I hadn't asked them their names. What would I tell Myra?

Myra.

I needed to inform Myra. What about the horses?

“We'll take care of that,” said the officer in the passenger seat. He was older than the silver-haired driver, with a stern, tensile face. I couldn't recall her telephone number, but I did know her address. The driver and I sat in silence while he made a call. When he was done, I asked whether we were headed to the house.

“Not yet.” We were driving to the hospital first. I must also undergo a check-up.

The officer glanced back. How did it happen? We have so many cases of horseback injuries in these parts, he added.

It was a car, I said. A speeding car, that set the horses off. And I couldn't control mine, and Philip followed.

The words rolled off my tongue.

He was trying… to stop my horse.

I thanked her, and stepped out, looking for Myra.

The waiting room was busy, a child wailed, a youth held a bloodied
rag to his hand, an elderly lady coughed violently into her handkerchief. I filled a plastic cup with water from the dispenser, and sat in the corner.

Forty minutes later, I asked the receptionist if she had any news.

“Philip… Philip Templeton…”

At a loss, I headed outside. Standing in the driveway was the police officer who'd brought me here, smoking.

“She's here,” he told me. “She left as soon as we informed her.”

He exhaled—swirls of smoke and mist.

“You better go in…”

I was shivering, my jacket doing little to keep out the cold.

Around me, the walls of the hospital gleamed gritty and bright, all steel and glass.

Back inside, I looked for the nurse who'd given me a check-up earlier, but she was nowhere in sight. The corridors were white and endless, lit with stark squares of light.

“Nem.”

I turned around. It was Myra. Her face colorless as the snow I'd held in my hand that morning. When I clasped her, her words muffled into my shoulder: “He's in a coma.”

One evening, Nicholas explained why he was in Delhi.

“Ananda?” I reiterated.

We were in the garden, past midnight, sitting on the wicker chairs, our drinks gently perspiring on the table. It was early June, a few days before I headed home for a month. Outside the gate, gulmohars blazing scarlet flanked the main road like liveried dancers, while the flowerbeds in the bungalow garden rambled with purple-pink petunias, tissue thin in the heat. Somewhere close by, a champa tree was in bloom; I couldn't see it, but the air carried its deep, golden fragrance.

Nicholas said the path of scholarly enquiry was strewn with surprises.