The Wild Boy and Queen Moon (11 page)

‘I want a new pony,’ she whispered to her mother.

‘Bad luck, Sandy,’ said her mother gently. ‘No go, I’m afraid, at the moment.’

As Uncle Arthur still wanted Empress of China exercised, both Sandy and Leo took it in turns to ride her. Fitter now, she was an easy ride and they both got to like the feel of a big horse. In spite of the fact that she was a funny-looking creature, she had good paces. But when she took a hold along the bottom pastures she could frighten them both with her thoroughbred power. They weighed nothing compared with Uncle Arthur
and
she thought she was a racehorse again with a little seven-stone lad astride. She dropped ten years and her dull old eyes glittered.

‘We’ve got our team,’ Polly exclaimed, watching. ‘Charlie’s Flying, King of the Fireworks, Empress of China and Faithful.’

She carefully did not say who was to ride Empress of China.

‘What about Faithful being too small?’

‘Oh, we’ll get her shod with pads. Stand her on uneven ground when she’s measured. Something. It’s only an inch. No-one’ll object.’ Horse people, fierce competitors, were notorious at bending rules. ‘It’s not as if she’s got any form.’

‘She can certainly jump.’

‘She’s never done team-chasing.’

Tony Speerwell, finding approbation, seemed to grow nicer. He was coming up to his nineteenth birthday and was going to have a party. He gave them all invitations.

‘Bring your boyfriends,’ he said kindly.

They went scarlet.

‘We haven’t got any,’ said Leo bitterly, when they were alone. ‘Do you think Ian’d come if I asked him?’

Sandy had been wondering about Duncan. But it was too embarrassing. She went into a dream about meeting Jonas and him saying how lovely she was and agreeing to take her to Speerwell’s party.

‘I don’t know,’ she said. It answered everything in her life. She felt deeply depressed. Since Gertie had come, home wasn’t as nice any more. Her mother had become irritable and over-pressed, keeping the peace between warring factions. Sometimes Gertie and Grandpa seemed to have taken over completely, turning a united front against the rest of them while they commandeered the fire and the best chairs and the television. Even the dogs left them and joined the family in the sitting-room.

‘Roll on summer,’ Mary said hopefully.

‘She’ll go then, won’t she?’

‘I’m working on it.’

On Saturday morning, Sandy rode over to visit Josie. She thought Josie might be good for her. Josie and Glynn were always short of money: perhaps they would take Gertie? Gertie gave all her pension money to her hosts and, in fact, ate very little. It must be profitable. Sandy knew her mother didn’t do it for the money but because she was kind, but other people might do it for the money.

It was a cheerful day, the sun slanting brightly across the marshes and the wild ducks mating noisily on the river. George went with gusto and Sandy forgot about what she didn’t have and decided that what she did have wasn’t bad at all. Moods swung for no reason. There was
no
cause for her to feel miserable. She could ask Josie what she should do about her missing thirty pounds. Josie always had an answer for everything. Her whole life had appeared to be in ruins when she got pregnant, but she had weathered the storm like a lifeboat. Josie never went under.

Sandy had hoped she might meet Jonas, but she didn’t. However, when she left the sea-wall and turned up the track that led to the Elizabethan tower, she saw Queen Moon grazing at the side of Josie’s garden. Her rope halter was tied round her neck, but she was loose. When she saw George she lifted her head and gave a soft whinny.

‘Whatever are you doing here?’

Sandy pulled up and stared at her. She was a dream horse, shining like a silvery ghost in the shadows under the gnarled oaks; she was so fine and delicate compared with George. Yet Sandy knew she was as hard as nails. She had long, shapely ears and her forelock blew up in the morning breeze as she turned her head.

‘Oh, you are so beautiful!’

To Sandy at that moment, Queen Moon was the essence of the unattainable; Queen Moon was perfection. Queen Moon was all her dreams rolled into one tangible thing, standing there looking at her with her huge, kind eyes. George stopped and gave a snort.

‘Oh, get on, pig,’ Sandy said, snappishly.

Then she was sorry and gave him a pat, and he walked past Queen Moon to the gate of Josie’s garden. Sandy slipped off. She suddenly realized that Jonas might be visiting. Did he know Josie? Why else was Queen Moon there?

‘He’s gone with Glynn to give him a hand with some timber. Two-man job. Glynn met him down by the river and they got talking. Now he comes up to help sometimes,’ Josie explained.

Sandy, having tied George up inside the fence, sat in Josie’s kitchen. It was the bottom room in the tower, round in shape like a lighthouse, with a stone staircase running up one wall to disappear through a hole in the ceiling. The ceiling was very high. Glynn had fixed a stove against the wall opposite the door, which had a wire-netting fence round it to keep the now crawling baby at bay, and there was a large table in the middle and a long sofa to sprawl on, colourful rag mats on the stone floor and a great forest of greenery growing out of pots. It didn’t look like anyone else’s kitchen that Sandy knew. The windows were made of Tudor glass in tiny leaded squares and gave a yellow, squinting view of the outside, so that nothing looked quite real. No wonder Josie was happy. Sandy wished she came more often: it was enchanting. But the livery yard took all her spare time.

‘Here, have a biscuit.’ Josie took a great tray of shortbread out of her Calor gas oven. She was
always
cooking or sewing or potting or producing something – a very creative girl. She never stopped. She flashed Sandy her quick, dark smile. She wore red dungarees and a navy shirt and her hair was a black cloud round her head. No wonder she had been snapped up before she was twenty. She was very like Ian in looks, Sandy noticed suddenly: they were both like their mother. She was like her father who was fair and paunchy. Just her luck.

The baby, Selina, was biting the toe of her boot.

‘It’s been in the muck-heap, Selina.’ Sandy picked the baby up. It felt boneless and warm and cuddly. She wasn’t very good at holding it. It had a great loony smile with one tooth inside it and buttercup-yellow hair. It too was like its father.

‘Sneerwell’s asked us to his party. Bring a boy, he said. And I haven’t got one.’

‘You can have Glynn if you like.’

‘He’s too old.’

‘I thought you hated Sneerwell.’

Sandy explained about his turning nicer.

‘They give wonderful parties,’ Josie said. ‘Go with Leo. It doesn’t matter about boys.’

‘Leo’s going to ask Ian.’

‘Oh well.’

Sandy saw that there was no way she could ask Josie to take Gertie, as Gertie could not possibly
fit
in here. The idea was a non-starter. Gertie could never climb the lighthouse stairs to bed. Josie, as if telepathic, enquired about Gertie, and Sandy unloaded her moans, which made her feel better.

‘She just sits in the chair all day, talking, talking, talking. She doesn’t help at all. Yet in her cottage she used to be buzzing about all day. She drives us all nuts.’

‘Mum ought to get the social services. If she goes back to her cottage in the summer they could look after her there. After all, Mum used to. I’m sure it’ll get sorted out.’

‘She’s always criticizing. You wouldn’t mind if – if—’

‘If she was nice? No. I always thought she was a terrible old bag. You and Mum were always the nicest to her.’

Sandy ate three more shortbreads and Josie made coffee. Selina was given two saucepan lids to play with.

Sandy told Josie about losing the thirty pounds, and about Polly losing twenty.

‘That’s the worst, worse than Gertie. I haven’t told Mum and Dad. It must be someone around, someone we know.’

‘You ought to tell them!’

‘It was my fault, leaving it there. I can’t! They’ll be so angry.’ She couldn’t even begin to tell Josie about suspecting first Duncan, then Ian.
She
wished she hadn’t mentioned it, as Josie, instead of comforting, seemed about to launch an attack on her handling of her affairs. But at the opportune moment the door opened and Glynn came in. He carried a huge basket of wood offcuts for the stove.

‘Hey, good timing! Coffee’s up.’ He shrugged round and bawled out of the open door, ‘Jonas, coffee!’ He dumped the basket at Sandy’s feet. ‘Hi, Sandy. How’s things? Saw your nag tied up out there. It’s the in thing round here, horse transport. We’ll have to put up a hitching rail.’

He picked up Selina and flung her in the air. She screamed with delight. The quiet room seemed suddenly to have burst into life with Glynn’s arrival. The outdoor sunlight came in with him, along with the smell of fresh wood and damp earth. His fair hair stuck up like a halo round his head. His presence was very positive, and Sandy thought how lucky Josie was to have such a rock of a man to be her partner. Laughing, they looked incredibly handsome together, like an advertisement photo. Selina wriggled in the crook of Glynn’s arm and Josie took her, hitching her over her shoulder so that the baby’s gold hair glowed against her own blue-black tumble.

Sandy was impressed by seeing everything that home life should be, as compared to what it suddenly wasn’t any more at Drakesend. No wonder she got confused. She remembered the endless
tirades
from her father, condemning Glynn – impossible to think that all that heartache had resolved into this picture of domestic bliss.

While she was being dazzled by this scene, Jonas Brown slipped hesitantly through the door. Sandy saw him and felt her face blazing scarlet, out of control. She wanted to die. She crouched over Glynn’s log-basket, making a pretence of putting wood on the embers of the fire.

‘Sandy, you know Jonas, don’t you? Jonas, Sandy.’ Josie made a sketchy introduction. ‘You’ll stay and have a coffee, Jonas? Here, sit down.’

She pulled out a chair at the table. Glynn took Selina back and Josie got out more cups and saucers. They were her own, covered with red-and-blue parrots.

‘Shortbread?’

She shoved across a plateful.

‘Sandy’s got to go to a party at the Speerwells’, Glynn. I said you’d take her.’

‘No!’ Sandy squeaked. ‘Don’t be daft!’

‘What’s wrong with me?’ Glynn grinned. ‘Not handsome enough?’

‘Too old,’ said Josie. ‘Besides, I’d be jealous. Hey, you could take her, Jonas! How about that?’

Sandy wanted to die. How
could
Josie be so crass? Had she really forgotten, already, what it felt like to be such a quivering bundle of hopes and confusions, despairs and self-loathing and wild ambition, that seemed to characterize this state of
adolescent
love? Or had she been so confident in her pursuit of men that she had never experienced her insides dying, her brain disintegrating?

‘They have great parties, the Speerwells. The food is out of this world. You’d take her, wouldn’t you, Jonas?’

What else could he say? Sandy heard him mumble that yes, he wouldn’t mind. Have a shortbread? Thanks. How many sugars in your coffee? Just one thanks. Sandy sat by the stove with her head drooping, her heart thumping like a clapped-out diesel engine. She could have killed Josie.

‘I must go,’ she mumbled.

‘You haven’t drunk your coffee,’ Josie pointed out amiably. ‘Here, I made a chocolate cake. I forgot. It needs eating.’

She was a fabulous cook. No-one could depart in the face of such a cake, thick with chocolate icing. Jonas, thin as a reed, ate as if he had never met chocolate cake in his life.

‘Who cooks at yours, Jonas?’ Josie asked him. ‘Your father?’

‘We go to the chippy. Or get pies from the shop.’

‘No wonder you look half-starved.’

In the ensuing banter Sandy began to recover, slipping up to the table to sit opposite Jonas. She would never get this opportunity again. Catch her going to Speerwell’s party after this! She
kept
stealing quick glances at Jonas. In close-up his gypsy looks were confirmed: his skin brown, his hair black and curling. He had dark brown eyes with long lashes and a quick, secret way of looking as if he, too, were not too sure of his ground. He had a quiet, graceful way of moving that spoke of an outdoor life. He would be useful to Glynn, Sandy could see: skilful with an axe, smart with machinery. He probably did not read much and his writing would be slow and laboured. He was magic with horses. Sandy wanted to know so many things, but could not speak.

Jonas ate three pieces of chocolate cake.

‘You’d better not bring him too often, Glynn,’ Josie joked.

Jonas flushed up, and Sandy felt herself glowing in sympathy.

‘He’s worth a chocolate cake. He’s a good worker,’ Glynn said. He made a date with Jonas to collect some more timber from the top wood. Sandy, in passing, recognized that it was her father’s timber that Glynn was taking. Ian had been offered the use of a tractor to do the same job, but had never got round to it, although he was always short of money. Ian was not an outdoor man.

‘I must go – tide to catch,’ Jonas mumbled.

A tide? Sandy went out with him, saying she had to go back. She thought she could ride as far
as
the sea-wall with him, unless he went off at his usual gallop. Josie came out with them, the baby on her hip.

‘You should come more often,’ Josie said to Sandy.

‘Yes.’ Sandy thought so too. She hadn’t realized what a gruelling life the livery yard had been during the last few months. ‘I’ll have more time in the summer. When it’s light.’

She untied George and clambered into the saddle while Jonas whistled Queen Moon and vaulted on to her back. But instead of galloping away, he held back and waited for Sandy.

‘She enjoys a bite of grass,’ he said.

‘Doesn’t she go out at all?’

‘No. I got nowhere.’

‘You could bring her to ours. Our field.’

‘Then how do I ride? Walk over?’ He laughed. It was about five miles.

‘Where did you get her from? She’s so lovely.’