She felt a cold shiver inside her and realised things were stranger than she thought.
“Does she talk to you?”
“She tells me things,” he said, “every now and then.”
“What things?”
“What you want, what you’re thinking.”
“How could Hester know, when most times I don’t know myself?”
“Because, maybe, she hasn’t died yet.”
She stared at his blue open eyes and saw Gregory coming behind him, thinned by the fading light.
“Hester was a doll, George, and a game of ours when we were younger. She’s gone now.”
“I wish she was,” he said.
But the next day was the last Sunday of the last weekend of summer and they acted children with a vengeance, perhaps because they weren’t children any more. On the Monday they would be off to different schools; the old National on the road to Termonfeckin with the gulls and sour milk, and Miss Cannon’s ruler had done its best with them—though George would be off to no school at all.
She awoke in the morning and he wasn’t there, in the dewy grass outside her window. The mist that curled like tobacco-smoke round the remaining haystacks seemed to accentuate his absence. She drifted into Gregory’s room and sat at the end of his rumpled bed till he woke up. She liked the sound of his breathing, the way his pyjamas curled round his thin, lengthening arms. Most of all she liked watching him unobserved, unawake, as unaware of her as if she had never existed. She realised why she had misspelt lonely so consistently, as it was the condition she had endured without him. She felt pity for the girl she had been, the lonely girl who hadn’t known she was lonely, and thought how odd it was to fully recognise a feeling only once it had vanished. She knew it now, truly, in retrospect and wondered did time always work like that, teaching us the truth of our condition only when that condition had ended. And then she felt a panic, like a sudden wave of water or a gulp of tears, at the thought that it might return. If it did return, it would be a more searing loneliness, one that knew itself, knew its word, its condition, knew its own history. The thought terrified her, stilled her into silence. She wondered what it would be like if he never woke up, slept like that, breathing peacefully, tangled under the bedclothes, for the rest of her days. Would that banish the fear of loneliness or make it worse, she wondered, and then he woke up.
The first tide was coming in over Mozambique, tiny runnels of water creeping over the cracked mud as if it would gradually consume the world. There was a horse there before them, a loose racehorse, hooves stuck in the mud, with purple and yellow racing colours, its saddle askew, foam dripping from its open mouth. George was standing by it, reaching out to touch its muzzle. When it whinnied George would pull his hand away then reach out again, closer each time. Janie sat on a mound, her knees drawn up to her chin.
“It must have broken loose at the Laytown races,” she said knowledgeably.
“Run the whole length of the beach and got to here.”
“What about the river?” Gregory asked.
“It jumped in and swam across.”
“What about the jockey?”
“Threw him in Laytown. Or dumped him in the river. Either way, she’s ours for a while.”
“He,” said George. He wiped foam from the horse’s muzzle and whispered in its ear.
“What are you telling him, Georgie?” Janie asked idly and edged closer.
“Secrets,” said George.”And mind his hind legs.”
“Can you share them with us?” Nina asked.
“No,” he said, and he seemed masterful for once. The muscles on his body matched the horse’s, in solidity and weight. He whispered again.
“I heard the tinkers talk to ponies,” he said.
“What does it sound like?”
“Backwards talk. Lift me up.”
She cupped her hands for him the way he had cupped his hands for her outside the Maiden’s Tower, and strained to keep them together as he hoisted up. The horse trembled when he sat on it, shifted its hooves in wide circles in the mud. George whispered again and it stilled itself.
“What do you think, shall I run her?”
“I’m not sure,” Nina said.
“Ah why not?” said Janie and gave the horse’s rump a slap.
It reared several times, making great sucking sounds in the mud, and then it ran, and when it had made it on to hard ground it ran faster, jumped the ragged fence of barbed wire, vanishing beyond the dunes in a spume of kicked sand. They were left like three exhaled breaths in its wake and Janie screamed, out of fear or pleasure or both, and ran after it. By the time they reached the dunes, George and the racehorse were a small splash of white, like one curling wave in an otherwise placid sea. After a time the splash of white seemed to exhaust itself. It turned and moved back along the path it had traced, explosions of foam along the water’s edge.
They walked down the sand-dunes towards the horse and the sea. There was no hurry now, he had not fallen again and broken more bones, the horse had not run riot and they were as spent as the horse must have been after its magical effort. Outlined by the glistening water like a diminutive satyr glued to the racehores’s wet back, the gentle wash reaching to his thighs, the horse turning slowly, rubbing its nose in the slow breakers, George seemed George at last, as if an ungainly chrysalis had peeled, leaving the stuttering and stare behind, to reveal this almost elegant extension of the horse’s mane. They waded out towards him and Nina felt the viscous wet clutch of seawater on her legs and her dress.
“Who wants a go?” he said, turning the animal gently so it faced them.
“Me,” said Nina, washing the foam on its flanks away with seawater.
“You couldn’t,” said George, and she was surprised by the authority in his voice.
“No,” she answered, “but Gregory could. He’s English, after all.”
“What’s English got to do with it?” George asked.
“An Englishman’s home is his castle. And his horse is his chariot. Isn’t that right, Gregory?”
“Chariot?” asked Gregory, and Nina could hear the tremor in his voice.
“It’s a saying.”
“I never heard that saying.”
“Or is it an Englishman’s home is his horse? Either way, up you get Gregory.” And now she was surprised by the authority in her voice. Horses brought out the best in people, she surmised. “Down you get, George.”
And George slid from the saddle through the lathers of foam to the sand below the water. He leant his back against the quivering horse and cupped his hands.
“Come on, Gregory.”
And Gregory came on. He placed one foot in the clasped hands and George hoisted him up in one swift, deft movement. Nina watched him as he settled in the saddle, as stiff and elegant as a pencil, and decided horses definitely brought out the best in people.
“Will he take two?” asked Gregory, wrapping the reins round his hands.
“Why wouldn’t he?” asked Nina, trying to assume an authority she didn’t quite feel now. George leant back against the trembling flank, clasped his hands together and let Nina use him as a stepladder. She placed her wet shoe in his hands, her wet hands on his shoulder and lifted herself out of the sea. She sat down on this hard mound of wet leather, felt it shiver beneath her as if exploring this new burden, then felt it shift gently from foot to foot, so her legs were like butter-churns in the water, a sensation not at all unpleasant.
“Hold on to his belt,” said George, and she did, and thought perhaps if he’d told her to hang herself and her family, she’d have done so just as readily.
“What’s it like when he gallops?” she asked him.
“Like falling,” he said, “but never reaching the ground.”
She wrapped her fingers round Gregory’s belt and felt the flannel of his underpants beneath it, the hard tiny scallops at the base of his spine against her knuckles.
“Are you ready?” she whispered.
“Yes,” he said, “but how do I make it go?”
“Kick him,” said George.
Gregory tightened the reins in his hands and dug in his heels. The horse gave a kind of a whimper, but didn’t move.
“Harder,” said George, and Gregory dug with his heels again. The horse shifted, splashed the water but stayed where it was. Then George raised his right hand and slapped it hard against its rear, and it raised itself once on its hind legs and galloped.
She felt none of the pounding she had expected, more of a feeling of flight, a rhythmic rise and fall of the horse beneath her, and whether she rose or fell, the headlong rush kept her pressed against Gregory. So it must be falling, she thought, as George had said, her small breasts pressed against his shoulder-blades, her fingers dug into the belt of his trouserts, her chin dug into one side of his neck. The water splashed around them like spattered pearls and a yacht sailed by to their right, the red sail idling in the other direction, the sailor giving them a lazy wave. Come on boy come on boy come on she muttered like a tinker’s mantra, and then the beach was at an end, they were coursing over the scutch and seagrass between the dunes and the farmland beyond it. There was a barbed wire fence and the horse jumped it, into a meadow full of August barley, and he pounded a flattening irregular path through the barley-stalks until a sound stopped him dead, and she fell again, sailed through the air with her brother this time, over the horse’s bowed head.
This was a different fall, a more languorous one, and she would remember thinking as she sailed through the air, her fingers still clinging to his belt, if I have to fall, I want to fall with him. The thick barley welcomed them with soft, cushioned arms, parted before them and made a generous path as they rolled to a halt. She was on top of him, sneezing with the chaff in the air, her fingers still dug in the belt of his trousers, laughing with exhilaration, coughing with the dust, until the sound stilled her into silence.
It was the scraping of a stone off a scythe, one stroke upwards, one stroke downwards, and it continued, at its own deliberate rhythm, as if marking time for some dance about to happen. She looked up and saw sparks flaring against the yellow barley, sparks from the sharpening stone, drawn over the blade. The blade was dark against the sunlight and behind it she could see the outline of a large, bearded face beneath a cowl.
“Are you sorry now?”
Nina stifled her laughter and stared upwards. Whoever it was stood, framed by the dancing ears of barley, the scythe curving above the brown cowl of his head. Her eyes travelled down the brown folds that wrapped a sturdy body, tied at the waist with a smudged cord, to the fringes of a skirt, swaying gently over sandalled feet.
“For what, sir?” she managed to ask.
“For making a right haims of our barley.”
“Are you the devil?” she asked, for a reason she couldn’t understand.
He laughed. “No,” he said, “but I’m in the devil of a bad humour. How will I explain this to the Abbot?”
“Tell him we’re sorry sir,” she said, “that the horse kept running and we couldn’t—”
“The horse, was it?”
She turned away and saw the horse behind her, over Gregory’s prone body. It was chewing lazily at the barley, a tremble, like the last breath of wind on water, running over its hide. There was a long black fist between the horse’s legs, growing all the time.
“Is he dead?” she asked. The thought was as huge to her as the word was tiny.
“I hope not.” He dropped the scythe in the barley and the horse whinnied at the sound. He moved towards it and it reared, its hooves flailing over Gregory’s head. She screamed, he grabbed the swinging reins, twisted the angry mouth towards him and whacked it in the rump with his free hand, letting the reins go with the other. It kicked free then, galloped through the barley, flattening another path. It jumped the fence, kicking sand up in clouds behind it, back the way it came.
He bent down towards Gregory, lifted him gently, turned his face towards the sunlight and pulled one eyelid open.
“What’s his name?”
“Gregory.”
“Are you dead yet, Gregory?”
“Who’s he, Nina?” Gregory asked slowly, eyes moving from one to the other.
“He’s not the devil, anyway,” she said.
“No,” he said, smiling, “I’m Brother Barnabas.”
He carried him then, through the waist-high barley, and Nina followed. Suddenly the terror struck her, after the event. The thought of death in this sunlit field seemed preposterous to her, unreal, but the very possibility made her shake. She heard the sound of sobbing, and realised it was hers.
“Are you crying, Nina?”
“No,” she said, “I’m just . . .”
“Just what?” he asked, holding Gregory’s form free of the nodding eaves of barley, just in front.
“You’re afraid of what I’ll tell the Abbot.”
“Yes,” she lied.
“Well,” he said. “There’s time enough for that.”
The field rose towards a wizened tree and the barley diminished around it. There was a small round pool below with a lip of crumbling stone. He knelt at the pool, brought Gregory’s head towards the water and dipped it in.
“Is the water cold?” he asked Gregory, who nodded. “Can you see my face?” And Gregory nodded again. “Can you stand?”
Gregory took a breath and he tilted him sideways, placed his feet on the ground. “What do you remember?” he asked.
“I fell,” said Gregory, slowly.
“No,” he said. “You died. The waters brought you back to life. Isn’t that true, little Nina?”
“Is it?” she asked, and the thought frightened her more than any thought yet.
“Did you see angels?” he asked. Gregory shook his head.
“What a pity,” he said sadly, “because they could have told you what to tell the Abbot.”
He reached out, took both of their hands and drew them towards him. He squatted, so the brown skirt rose halfway towards his knees.
“We could tell him the truth, that Nina and Gregory rode a horse through the barley.”
“Do we have to?” asked Nina.
“We have to tell him the truth. But then, I suppose the truth is that the horse ran through the barley of its own accord.”
“It did,” said Gregory.
“And what will I tell him about Nina and Gregory?”
“Nothing,” said Gregory.
“We’ll leave your field,” said Nina, “we’ll walk back along our tracks as if we never existed.”