All the King's Horses (15 page)

Mr Crewes was talking. ‘And you think he’s getting worse?’

‘Define “worse”,’ said Mom. ‘He’s been wandering less, but doesn’t always recognize Sarah and Colin any more. And if you knew how much they meant to him …’

Mr Crewes frowned. ‘Did the specialist you saw expect the disease to stabilize?’

‘I thought so,’ said Mom, ‘but maybe that’s just what I wanted to believe. Recently – well, one of the big maples in the front yard is rotting from the centre. And every time I pass it, I look at the rot and think, what is there to stop it?’

What is there to stop it
? Of course, she wasn’t really talking about a tree; she was talking about Grandpa. I swallowed hard, wondering if it was wrong to pray to faeries.

‘It’s always possible that the process can be retarded.’

‘By whom?’ she said. ‘All the specialist could tell me was that nobody understood the brain well enough to help Dad, let alone to cure him.’

‘There are other specialists,’ he said. ‘My college roommate is a doctor now. If I wrote to him, he might be able to recommend somebody.’

‘Suppose he did,’ she said bitterly, ‘and suppose I took Dad to see the specialist, and the specialist
told
me what I already know in my heart – that the deterioration will go on and on until Dad loses everything that gives a man
self
. Would we be any better off than we are now?’

Mr Crewes got up to put down his coffee cup; when he sat down again, it was on the cushion that had been between him and Mom. ‘If a specialist knew that, he could at least give you sympathetic and reliable advice. And that would be valuable, if not now, at least later. Eventually, for both the children’s sake and your own, you’d have to send him to—’

‘– an old folks’ prison?’ She looked into the fire; then she said, in a tight sort of voice, ‘You don’t know who he was.’

‘Not directly,’ he said. ‘But I’ve gotten to know Colin pretty well. And every time I talk to him, I run into a hero. Sometimes it’s Einstein, sometimes it’s a warrior with an unspellable Gaelic name, but they’re always grand and wonderful, from a world altogether different from the TV and comic-book facsimiles the other boys idolize. That kind of consciousness can only come from personal experience.’

Mom nodded. ‘Oh yes – and it wasn’t just the way he survived losing his arm, or his genius in the ring. He had a … bardic gift, I guess you could call it. He lived and breathed stories as he
lived
and breathed horses. And they interacted, somehow. One foot in the Otherworld, the other in the barn.’ She smiled, but her face looked sad. ‘And I lost him. Not now – long ago.’

‘Lost him?’ Mr Crewes sounded surprised.

Mom sighed. ‘We had a major falling out over my marriage.’

I edged closer to the door.

‘You see,’ she went on, ‘Peter’s family was of the same … class, I guess you could say … as the Smithes. That’s why we met, as a matter of fact – he roomed with the Smithes’ oldest son at Harvard, and they came to the farm for Easter. But Dad was the runaway son of an Irish drunk, self-educated, prone to settle matters with his fists – proud as a king, but no gentleman.’

Mr Crewes nodded.

‘You’re going to laugh,’ Mom went on, ‘but I didn’t understand what that meant. I went to school with children like the Smithes’, and because I was Dad’s daughter, and in the paper a lot because I’d won horse show championships, most of the other kids looked up to me. So, although the Smithes never even invited us into the living room when we went there to talk about strategies for the next show, I always thought we were their equals.’

Suddenly, in my mind, I was running over
to
the Big House at the Smithes’ to ask Mrs Smithe if she wanted me to ride one of the young hunter-jumpers in the next show instead of Fay (‘my’ pony). I was all excited, because Grandpa had said Mrs Smithe would probably say yes. I burst in the front door and dashed past the picture of the stag and the dogs into the living room – and stopped short, because the Smithes were sitting there with some of the people whose horses Grandpa trained. They were all in riding clothes; it wasn’t a party or anything. But when Mrs Smithe turned and saw me, I could tell I’d broken the rules, and I backed out, saying I was sorry I’d interrupted, which was what I thought I’d done wrong. But now I saw that what I’d done wrong was
be
there, in the living room. And I saw why, all those years, though the Smithes had been nice to us kids, I’d never really liked them.

I came back to the real world with a bump, and realized I’d missed something. ‘ … no difference to two eighteen-year-olds in love,’ Mom was saying. ‘But both families exploded. Peter’s parents said I was a fortune-hunter; and Dad said a man like Peter never married an Irish girl – he just made promises until she was in a family way, then left her.’

Mr Crewes shook his head, but he didn’t say
anything.
Maybe he was knocked speechless, like I was, that anybody – let alone Grandpa or Grandfather and Grandmother Madison – would say things like that. Mom glanced at him and went on.

‘Dad was especially bitter because the minute the War ended, he’d started making plans for me to study dressage at the Spanish Riding Academy. With that behind me, he figured I could qualify for the 1948 Olympics.’

‘You were
that
good?’ Mr Crewes’s voice said he was as impressed as I was.

‘That was part of the problem,’ said Mom. ‘I wasn’t. I was beautifully taught, and I worked hard, but I never had that extra ounce of genius that makes a truly great rider like Dad. He never admitted that, but I knew.’ She shook her head. ‘So there I was, between Peter – bright, polished, subtle in all the ways Dad wasn’t – and Dad, with his prejudices, his left fist, his hopes …’

‘And you chose Peter,’ said Mr Crewes with a sad smile. ‘Throwing over years of training for a school boy.’

‘A
Harvard
boy, to make things worse. When Dad realized I was really going to do it, he said terrible things. I’d heard them before, plenty of times, but they’d never been directed at me. This time, though, they were, and finally I got angry
back,
and I said …’ Her voice lowered. ‘I said I wanted my own life, because I was sick of living out his Olympic dreams.’

‘Oh, Deirdre!’

‘Don’t say it. The moment it was out of my mouth, I was sorry.’ She sighed. ‘But the rift never healed. Peter and I got married – his parents relented at the last minute and came, but Dad didn’t. I wrote sometimes, but he didn’t write back until Sarah was born. After that, he called on her birthday, and later, on Colin’s; and when I wrote that Peter’s reserve unit had been sent to Korea, he offered to take the kids for the summer. And so they became … ambassadors. Bearers of the regret I wasn’t allowed to offer in person.’ She dropped her head into her hands. ‘It was so unnecessary. And now – what can I say? It’s too late.’

Mr Crewes put an arm around her shoulder. ‘It’s not too late,’ he said. ‘You said yourself how much the children mean to him. And look how much you’ve given him since he’s been ill.’

‘I couldn’t just turn him out in the streets, could I?’ she said, in a voice that didn’t sound like Mom’s at all.

I couldn’t believe she’d said that, but Mr Crewes didn’t seem to be upset about it. ‘That’s what I was saying earlier,’ he said quietly. ‘There
are
hospitals, as well as old folks’ homes.’

‘What?’ she said, turning on him. ‘Send him off to strangers? Leave him to lose his sanity and his dignity with nobody to grieve for him? How could I do that? He was the king of trainers, a poet, a hero! And even if he hadn’t been, he’s my father, and I love him with all my heart!’ Her voice choked off, and she cried and cried, and Mr Crewes put both arms around her and stroked her hair.

I went upstairs and checked on Grandpa. He was asleep on his office sofa, so I could have gone and told Colin about Mom and Dad and all the rest. But I didn’t; I wasn’t sure how he’d feel about it.

I wasn’t sure how I felt about it myself.

I NEVER DID
tell Colin about Mr Crewes and Mom; after all, it might not have been what it looked like, and I didn’t want to upset him, especially since he spent every supper telling us about the nifty things he and Mr Crewes were doing at school. I didn’t tell him about the hospital stuff, either, because he was impatient enough about not being able to get back to Faerie as it was. But I did tell him about Mom and Grandpa, and he thought it was just as sad as I did. We agreed it meant we had to be extra nice to Mom, and we started cleaning the house and doing all the dishes without being asked; she was really pleased. So everything was fine, except the way I felt about her not telling us that Mr Crewes had been the friend she’d gone shopping with, or that he’d come to visit. There was
nothing
wrong with those things, of course; it was just … well, she was the one who’d said ‘no secrets’.

Christmas morning was sad. Mom had said there weren’t going to be many presents, and we’d said that was fine, but we both gulped when we saw there were only two things for each of us and one of them was clothes; we hadn’t known things were
that
bad. Mom liked the books we got for her, and she made a super Christmas breakfast, but Grandpa didn’t understand what was going on, and he was upset because things weren’t the way they usually were. All in all, even though I’d been feeling funnier and funnier about seeing Grandmother and Grandfather, by the time Paddy came with their limousine, I was as ready as Colin for some Christmas cheer.

We got it. All the way down to the Cape, we sang with Paddy – Christmas carols until we ran out of those, then Grandpa songs like
Wearin’ o’ the Green
and
Macushla
– until our voices went fuzzy. Then we hung over the front seat, listening to Paddy’s stories about the things his brother’s children had done to free Ireland from the Brits since last Christmas – and it seemed hardly any time at all before we turned in the big gate to Grandfather and Grandmother’s driveway. It
was
like coming to a crystal castle; all forty of the windows were lit up with electric candles. Inside, the front hall was filled with pine boughs and silver ribbon, and we were welcomed in with Christmas hugs from Maureen and Jack (Paddy’s wife and son), who were waiting at the door, and another from Molly, who scooted in from the kitchen, smelling of roast beef and garlic and fresh-baked rolls. Then Maureen and Paddy took our stuff upstairs, and Jack took us into the living room, where Grandmother and Grandfather were sitting by the fire. They said how much we’d grown, and we kissed them, and then we admired the tree, which was huge, with real glass ornaments and white lights (Grandmother thought coloured lights were vulgar). Under the tree there were lots of boxes, all perfectly gift-wrapped by people at expensive stores. We were allowed to look at them, but we couldn’t open them until after supper.

Supper was an old-fashioned Christmas dinner, and it was a big deal. Grandfather and Colin wore dinner jackets (Colin’s had been our dad’s when he was a kid), and Grandmother wore lots of diamonds and an evening gown that had been made especially for her. I wore my best dress, and I took my hair out of its pony-tail and brushed it smooth, and though I knew I wasn’t as
splendid
as Grandmother would have liked, I looked pretty good for me. Dinner started out with fruit cocktail (not the stuff in cans) served in crystal bowls that sat in silver dishes of crushed ice; then there was roast beef with Yorkshire pudding and roast potatoes and Molly’s rolls with lots of butter, and glazed carrots, and at the end, baked Alaska, which Molly had made into a Christmas tradition two years ago when Colin told her it was his favourite food. It was wonderful, just the way it always was, but this year a part of me kept worrying about what would happen if Grandpa spilled his food on the tablecloth, and the first time Grandfather Madison picked up his wine glass, I almost told him to be careful.

Colin obviously didn’t feel the way I did; he ate and ate, and after he’d polished off his baked Alaska (which he did before the rest of us had taken five bites), he began to talk just as cheerfully as he did at home. ‘I’m learning about the brain at school,’ he said. ‘And it’s—’

‘Oh please, dear,’ said Grandmother Madison. ‘Not at the table.’

Grandfather looked pained, but he just said, ‘Do you have a good teacher?’

‘Boy, do I ever!’ said Colin. ‘His name is Mr Crewes, and he went to
MIT
—’

‘– Did he know your father?’ said Grandmother.

‘He couldn’t have,’ said Colin. ‘He was there when Dad was at Harvard, and by the time Dad went to graduate school, he was already in the army. While he was overseas, he married a Korean girl …’

I looked up from my plate, surprised that Colin knew that (not to mention, surprised that Mr Crewes was married) – and when I saw Grandmother and Grandfather’s faces, I tried to kick Colin so he’d stop, but the table was too wide.

‘ … but something went wrong when she had a baby, and both she and the baby died. When he got back home, he went to graduate school in Physics – right, Grandmother, just like Dad – but his family had money problems, so he became a teacher to help them out instead of finishing his thesis.’ Colin smiled at Grandfather. ‘Which means I’m studying with somebody who could have been a college professor, like Dad wanted to be.’