Authors: Catherine Hunt
‘Come on, old boy, you can do it,’ she encouraged.
He made it on the third attempt and Laura’s spirits soared, briefly, before sinking again.
He was standing, yes, but only on three legs. He was holding his right foreleg, the one without the barbed wire, suspended in the air. She guessed it was broken.
Reluctantly, she pulled her mobile from her jacket pocket. He was looking at her with those wild eyes of his and, she thought, he knows what is going to happen. She wanted very much to tell him that it wouldn’t, that he would be all right, but she didn’t because she knew it was a lie. She had an urgent desire to make the call in private, some place he couldn’t hear. Absurdly, she backed away a few feet from him.
She made the call, choking out the words, but the line was bad and the wind was rattling through the trees and Grace, the stable girl who answered the phone, didn’t seem to follow what she was saying. She repeated it all at the top of her voice but even then Grace was confused. She kept asking exactly where they were and why they had left the proper route.
Laura started to lose it, shouting at Grace to ‘get the fucking vet out here now’. Abruptly she stopped, forced herself to give clear instructions, to make certain Grace understood. When the call was over she put her head in her hands and sobbed, replaying the accident in her head, trying to work out what had happened. It occurred to her then that she should take photos of the scene. Holding her mobile in shaky hands, she focused, half blind, through weeping eyes.
She knew she must stop crying as it would only upset Valentine more. She must grit her teeth for him and stay quietly with him until the vet arrived. She couldn’t do much for him but she could do that. She could try to comfort him, make sure nothing startled him, stop him from moving about and making his injuries worse.
She wiped her eyes with her sleeve and stood next to the horse, waiting, all the time talking softly to him and trying to put from her mind thoughts of the inevitable – the vet arriving, seeing the horse, fetching the gun from his bag …
Valentine trembled, nostrils red and flared, ears flat. Sweat poured off his flanks and neck and head. But she didn’t need to see these signs. She could feel his fear, and however much she tried to hide it, she thought that he could feel hers. She looked at her watch, wished that the vet would arrive, then wished that he wouldn’t. Just a few more minutes, she said out loud, then wished that she hadn’t.
Joe lay in bed and watched her sleeping next to him. She had put him on cloud nine and he was in no rush to come down. She was beautiful in a way he found it hard to describe. It was not a classical, regular beauty but a striking and overpowering one and it took his breath away. She had a long face with a strong chin, full lips and startling green eyes set far apart so that sometimes, in the half dark, she looked like a cat. But it was more than her looks that excited him, it was her whole nature. Her passion, her sense of fun, her interest in every little bit of his life and the way, when he talked to her about it, she listened as if he was saying the most fascinating things in the world. She made him feel good, like a drug – a drug he couldn’t get enough of.
She opened her eyes, saw him looking at her. He smiled, raised an eyebrow at her in that hot, suggestive way that so many women had found irresistible.
‘I love your smile,’ she purred, touching her fingers to his lips, drinking him in. He kissed her and she pulled him down towards her, putting her hand behind his head and twisting her fingers in his hair. He felt her tongue on his teeth, in his mouth, and he closed his eyes, totally lost to her.
Of course, he had missed the business meeting and he was annoyed with himself for doing so. Why he had thought he could visit her and still make it, God alone knew. Things had not worked out that way, of course they hadn’t. Once he was in bed with her, he never rushed away.
He and his brother were due to see some American tour operators who, if handled right, could deliver a lot of custom to the Greene hotel chain. Joe was good at chatting up clients. His looks, his charm and his ability to put on a show, paid dividends. The Americans were on a tight schedule and Saturday morning was the only time they had free, so now brother Peter would have to do it on his own and it was not his strong point.
Joe texted Peter with the excuse that he was coming down with flu. Peter replied immediately, furious, calling Joe unreliable, saying it was a pity that he couldn’t even deliver on one of his few assets, his PR skills. Words like erratic, useless and disappointment were sprinkled through his angry texts. Joe switched off the phone. He really shouldn’t have to put up with this.
‘My brother needs to be a bit more savvy about being a salesman,’ he said, frowning, ‘Spend some time learning people skills instead of being pissed off at me.’
She trailed her fingers through the hair on his chest and gently stroked his neck. ‘He shouldn’t be pissed at you, sweetheart, he needs you. You can get him more business than he knows what to do with because you,’ she kissed his chin, ‘can charm the birds off the trees.”
He looked down into the sparkling green eyes. No-one had ever made him feel this special. So, he had missed the meeting, upset Peter, but there were compensations. She had told him she was free until early evening. Laura would be at the stables for most of the day and he didn’t think she would miss him. It meant they could spend the afternoon in bed together.
‘I love the way you believe in me, honey. Makes me feel I could do anything in the world.’
‘You can do, Joe. You can do whatever you want. And I will always be there to help. Always.
‘In that case, I can never go wrong,’ his blue eyes sparkled.
‘Don’t laugh,’ she said, ‘But I feel like we’re soulmates.’
‘Body as well as soul,’ he said, kissing her hard on the lips.
It was nearly five when he looked at his watch and told her he should get going.
‘You take care, honey,’ he murmured, stroking her hair.
‘Tell me you love me,’ she said, hugging him close.
‘You know I do. You know I’d do anything for you.’
When he had gone, her full lips curved into a wide smile. He had missed his important meeting because of her; he loved her and would do anything for her, anything at all. He was such a wonderful man, everything she had hoped he would be.
For Jeff Ingham it was one of his worst case scenarios. A badly injured horse that should be put down as soon as possible, and a traumatized woman refusing to let him do it. He had been here before. He sighed.
As soon as he arrived he knew she was trouble. She spotted him walking up the track and headed him off well before he reached the horse. She shouted at him that she did not want the horse killed, that before she would even consider it he would have to prove beyond a shadow of a doubt that there was no other way. She made him feel like he was in the dock, on a charge of horse-slaughter.
She was a mess herself, covered in mud, with her riding jacket ripped at the shoulder, and blood down the left side of her trousers. Her hat was askew and her face streaked with dirt and tears. She limped towards him, putting all her weight on her right leg, looking very young and vulnerable. One hand clutched her ribs. Clearly, it had been a bad fall for her too.
Reluctantly, she let him near the horse. He saw at once that it was badly hurt. There might be a chance if it had only been the one leg damaged by wire. The injuries there, though bloody, were at the top of the leg where there was dense muscle. If infection didn’t set in, the wounds might be repaired with careful stitching. But the other leg looked as if it was broken. The horse could put no weight on it at all. Together, in his opinion, the injuries were a fatal combination.
Gently he explained it to her, ran through what he had to do and why he had to do it. Pauline, the veterinary nurse who had come out with him, put her arm around the woman’s shoulders.
‘Best to get it over with,’ she said, ‘He’ll just suffer otherwise.’
The arm was furiously shaken off. The woman’s hazel eyes glared at him and she said in a barely controlled voice: ‘How bad is the break?’
He couldn’t tell her that, not without an X-ray. Valentine was relaxed now with sedatives and painkillers and he examined the leg again. There were no obvious odd angles to indicate where the fracture was, or that any bones were displaced, but the skin was broken above the fetlock, a few drops of blood marking the spot. A place for infection to strike.
A sour ball of dread filled Laura’s stomach as she watched the vet inspecting Valentine’s injuries, his curly brown hair flopping over his forehead. He swept it back with his hand and straightened up, a set look on his open, freckled face. Laura thought, desperately, it was a kind face with kind, soft brown eyes. He would give Valentine a chance, surely. But that was a stupid thought. He was a professional, he would be used to this kind of situation, he would make a pragmatic decision.
She took hold of his arm, apologized for shouting at him earlier, apologized to the nurse for being rude. Then she politely introduced herself and told him that he probably thought her hysterical and unable to make a decision that would be best in the long term for Valentine, thought her too emotional to be objective.
It was so exactly what he did think that he had to smile.
‘Please,’ she said, ‘I just have to be sure. Please let’s take him back, X-ray him, treat him and then, if it’s hopeless, I won’t argue. I won’t keep him alive if his life is a misery. I’m not that selfish.’
It was a difficult call. Until a few years ago a fractured leg was an automatic death sentence. It wasn’t possible to put a horse’s leg in a plaster cast because of its size and the weight of the animal. But now that could be done and there were options.
The vet knew the chances of recovery were slim and that the process would be extremely stressful for the horse. The very things necessary for healing – confinement, inactivity, and drugs – could drive the creature mad. But there were success stories and Valentine was young, young enough to heal if the break was not too bad.
‘All right,’ he said, ‘We’ll see. One thing. Are you insured? This could cost a lot. Thousands probably.’
She nodded, hope pulsing, not trusting herself to speak in case the tears came. It was true she had insurance though she knew it would be no use. She had been trespassing so it wouldn’t pay out, but she wasn’t going to tell him that. He looked around, searching for a route to bring in transport for the horse. Laura told him they would have to bring the trailer in across fields then down over the clifftop.
‘It’s all private land, Jeff, ‘ Pauline said. ‘Grace at the stables said they shouldn’t have been riding here. She was worried about it. Seems there’s been some trouble between the landowner and the stables. Should we get permission?’
‘No time,’ he told her, ‘We’re taking too long as it is. Get the trailer here as fast as you can.’
The nurse set off down the path. Laura stood talking quietly to Valentine. Jeff Ingham went and stood beside her, holding his vet’s bag. He put it down, opened it, took out the splints and bandages. Beneath them lay the gun, the gun that would have ended Valentine’s life. He saw her eyes flick over it, saw her flinch.
‘How did the accident happen?’ he asked.
She stared at him blankly for several seconds, ‘I just don’t know. It was so sudden. The wire … ’ she trailed off.
‘It must have been on the ground and got caught round his legs’
‘Yes, I suppose so.’
‘Not the usual riders’ route is it? You never know what’s been left lying around.’
As soon as he said it he regretted it. He hadn’t meant to sound like he was blaming her but he could see from the hurt look on her face that she had taken it that way.
Together they began splinting the broken leg and he explained how it was done. He would have liked to talk to her about what lay ahead, to make it clear that she needed to make hard decisions. Even if Valentine could be saved, and that was a very big if, she could not afford to be sentimental.
He wanted to say that horses were meant to spend their lives in motion. It was their nature, their design. A horse kept alive but unable to move freely or take more than a few steps at a slow walk, had no quality of life. Valentine would hate the vulnerability that came with lameness and pain, the terror of being on insecure footing, of being unable to run away from possible threats. Mother Nature wasn’t kind – horses with broken legs were not meant to be hospital patients, but dinner for local predators.
But he said none of it because he sensed she already understood and didn’t need a lecture.
It took them more than half an hour to finish the splint. There was more equipment in the trailer and they did a thorough job. He couldn’t be certain there were no displaced bones and he took great care to make sure there would be no chance of further damage on the journey back. He used two lengths of half rounded guttering pipes to make up the splint and wrapped around them a small mountain of cotton wool, bandages, bits of old towels and sheets, self-sticking veterinary wrap and nearly twenty rolls of various elastic tapes. At the end of it all, Valentine’s lower leg was immobile, encased in a giant, many layered column.
Laura had seen these bandages before but had never been involved in making one. It was a ‘Bob Jones’ bandage, named for the World War One doctor who developed it, and it had used more materials than she had ever thought possible. Each layer, on its own, was not enough to stabilise a serious injury, but as successive layers were added and the padding was pulled tighter and tighter, the eventual result was a stiff cast. It was a first aid technique that could save a horse’s life and increase the chances of long term recovery. She put all other thoughts aside and concentrated on getting it right.
After Pauline arrived back with the trailer and started helping with the bandage, Laura’s job was to hold Valentine and keep him still. He’d been heavily sedated and cooperated well at first but as the wrapping continued he became panicky and it was hard to calm him.