Annan Water (9 page)

‘Yes,’ said Jean. ‘And usually with Michael’s head inside it.’

‘You serious?’ said Annie. ‘Have you fallen off?’

‘You’ve got to be joking!’ said Michael. ‘I come off at least once a week. We all do.’

‘Speak for yourself,’ said Frank.

‘You would too, if you ever did more than road-work.’ He turned back to Annie. ‘It’s part of the job.’

Annie looked disappointed.

‘Never mind,’ said Frank. ‘Come out and see if you can do it too.’

She didn’t, though. Bandit took good care of her, bringing up the rear of the rambunctious ride, keeping well clear of the fireworks. Michael glanced back from time to time, but Annie seemed to be in no need of reassurance. On the contrary, she was having a ball, and fast becoming a rider.

After breakfast they loaded the roan horse and a leggy two-year-old that none of them liked on to the lorry. Frank was off to the sales with them, and he dropped Michael and Annie off in town on his way through.

‘Don’t be bringing them home again, you hear me?’ said Michael, as he jumped out over the wheel arch. ‘Nor any new ones, either!’

‘Why not?’ said Annie, as they ducked into a shop doorway to shelter from the rain.

‘Too many horses,’ said Michael.

‘Naa,’ said Annie. ‘No one could have too many horses.’

They bought brushes and scrapers and turps and sandpaper; a gallon of white gloss and a half gallon of black. Annie chose it all, and Michael paid. His roll of notes impressed her.

‘Where did you pilfer that?’

‘I earned it,’ he said. ‘My share of the sales.’

‘Wow,’ said Annie. ‘Wow!’

They left the paint to collect later, and went on to a bookshop. Michael found the study notes easily enough, but there wasn’t a copy of
Veterinary Notes for Horse Owners
. He was disappointed.

‘When’s her birthday?’ asked Annie.

‘Not until the twenty-eighth.’

‘Order it, then. There’s plenty of time.’

She marched up to the counter. The assistant looked up the book on the computer.

‘It’s in print,’ she said. ‘We should have it inside a week.’

‘Can you post it to me?’ said Michael.

‘We can. You’ll have to pay the postage.’

‘Can you gift wrap it?’ said Annie.

The assistant smiled. ‘Whatever you like.’

‘We’ll get a card,’ said Annie. ‘Get the whole thing sorted. They can post it straight out to Jean if you tell them the right date.’

They chose a Gary Larson cartoon and Michael borrowed a pen to write in it, then handed it on to Annie. ‘You sign it too.’

‘No. It’s from you.’

‘From you too. Go on.’

Annie took the pen and signed the card in her stylish calligraphy. Michael sealed it and handed it over to the assistant, who took all the details and rang up the total on the till. Michael was walking on air as they left the shop. Jean’s birthday was taken care of. It was a weight off his mind.

‘How did I ever survive without you?’ he said.

Annie linked her arm through his and squeezed it. They broke into a spontaneous soft-shoe shuffle along the pavement, and the Dumfries shoppers parted before them.

They sat in a café over tea and buns, and afterwards Annie dragged Michael in to get an ear pierced. As soon as he’d got it done she said, ‘Shall we go the whole hog? Shall we get a tattoo?’

He shrugged. He would have followed her through a butcher’s mincer if she had asked him to.

She got a Celtic cross in black and red, and picked out a caduceus for him: two snakes entwined around an ivy-clad stick.

‘It’s something alchemical,’ she said. ‘Only for geniuses.’

‘Where’s yours, then?’

‘That’s what you’d like to know, isn’t it?’ she said, and the look she gave him hit him somewhere in the solar plexus.

The needles hurt more than he expected them to, and Michael had to keep reminding himself to stop looking. Instead he watched the other tattooist working on Annie. He noticed that the pink scars were fading; blending into the white web, and that there was no sign of any new ones. He hoped it meant she had given up doing it.

They were both a bit subdued when they came out, but the burger joint beefed up their spirits again, and before long, laden with plastic bags and paint cans, they were hitching their wet way home.

The third car that passed them pulled in. It was Jean. The back seat was down and the whole car was crammed full of feed bags. Annie spread-eagled herself on top of them and Michael squashed himself into the passenger floor space.

‘My God,’ said Jean, catching sight of his earring. ‘Whatever she’s got, it’s contagious.’

After they’d unloaded the feed, Jean orchestrated a major rearrangement in the yard. The biggest horses were moved into the four new boxes, and several newcomers and youngsters that Jean wanted to get working on were brought in from the fields. Somehow or other the numbers didn’t add up, and Bandit had to be turned out in a New Zealand rug. Annie was disgusted.

‘He’ll catch his death!’ she whined.

‘That’ll be the day,’ said Jean.

They swept all the dragged straw and hoof emptyings up off the yard, then Michael took Horrocks out for a school over the jumps, and Annie got roped in to hold the sport horse while Jean gave him a trace clip. She was full of herself afterwards.

‘He didn’t like it at all, but I hung on to him, didn’t I, Jean? I didn’t let him get away.’

‘You might get that flat in the horsebox yet,’ said Michael. ‘You might even get it rent-free.’

But it was the wrong thing to say. Annie’s mood deflated, and he hovered helplessly, too tall again all of a sudden; too gangly to know where his feet were.

He took her down to the closed-up gate. Together they cleared away the reaching brambles and the brittle, brown remains of last year’s weeds. Beneath them Michael could see new growth beginning; the shoots pale and vulnerable against the brown earth. He was glad to see them. The leaves would soon follow, and the grass in the tired meadows. The horses would begin to fatten and shine.

He let Annie continue with the clearing while he set to work with the wire cutters. But even when they had removed all the entanglements, they couldn’t get the gate open. The ground had closed over the bottom bar and they had to go back and get spades to dig it out.

By the time they were finished, it was almost dark. As they walked back to the house, the spades over their shoulders, Michael plucked up courage.

‘If you ever wanted to talk about it …’ he said.

‘About what?’

‘I don’t know. Your mum and everything.’

Annie shrugged. ‘Nothing to talk about, really. She’s got MS. Had it about four years.’

‘Do you mind?’ said Michael. ‘I mean, helping her and all that.’

‘What’s the point in minding?’ said Annie. ‘You do what you have to do, don’t you?’

There was a small silence, then Michael said, ‘And what about your dad?’

He sensed her immediate withdrawal from him. ‘What about him?’

‘I don’t know. Just …If you ever wanted to talk about it …’

‘I’ll let you know,’ she said coldly.

Back in the yard, Frank was getting out of the lorry. Amazingly, it wasn’t rattling or rocking about on its springs. It was empty.

The four of them gathered around the fire with glasses of Baileys and ice, and drank a toast to Frank’s long-awaited acquisition of sense.

After dinner they sat around the kitchen table, composing the next set of advertisements for the papers. They started with the grey mare. No one could remember how many points she had won, and Michael couldn’t be bothered to go hunting through the records.

‘Just put: “Will take the right rider to the top.”’

‘A competent rider,’ said Frank.

‘Perfect,’ said Jean, writing it down.

They wrote a spiel for Horrocks, and one for The Menace, who was pretty much sound again. Then they got round to Bandit.

It was a minute or two before Annie realized who the chestnut cob was that they were discussing. When she did, she was appalled.

‘Bandit?’ she gasped. ‘You can’t sell Bandit!’

‘We know that,’ said Frank. ‘But we live in hope.’

Michael’s tattoo stung like hell when he went to bed, but he was well accustomed to living with aches and pains, and it wasn’t that that kept him awake. It was Annie, beneath his roof, just a wall away.

How could she be so close one minute and so distant the next? How could she plunge so fast into the dark; into the secret horror-chambers of her heart? He could help her if she let him; he was somehow certain of that. He could break those doors down, beat off the ravens, haul out the tyrant by his blue beard and strike off his head. But she had to give him the chance. She had to show him the way.

He saw her arm again, bared in the tattoo parlour. All those lines were a code he could not crack; the hieroglyphic record of her past; the cardiogram of her damaged heart. He turned over and, filling him with a sudden, cold dread, the river was singing its black, oily music.

… wondrous deep … wondrous bonny …

How long was it since a voice first gave birth to those words? A hundred years? Two hundred? When did Annie’s old willow fall? When did the bushes blacken and shrivel? How long had that stretch of the bank been bare?

… never more I’ll see my Annie …

My Annie. He didn’t slam his head into the pillow. The words were no longer taboo. They were the incubators of his newborn hopes. They were the hearth fires of his dreams.

A
NNIE, WEARING HER HELMET,
was already in the kitchen when Michael came down in the morning. He edged around her as she made the tea, afraid of the touch he longed for.

The rain was falling heavily. When Jean got up she looked out of the window and shook her head. It only happened about twice a year that they didn’t ride out, and usually it was as a result of a hard, hard frost which left the roads like glass and the fields as solid as concrete. Michael looked out again and understood. It was sheeting down out there. It was the kind of rain that drenched you as you made a dash for the car; that made roads into streams; that swept the stableyard for you and left the sweepings in neat piles around the edges of the drains.

Jean poured two cups of tea and returned upstairs. Michael poured two more. He and Annie sat at the kitchen table to drink them.

‘It’s my fault,’ said Annie. ‘I’m bad luck.’

‘Where did you get that idea?’

She shrugged. ‘It’s the same wherever I go.’

‘Well, you’re not bad luck here,’ said Michael. ‘It’s good luck for me to get a morning off.’

‘But you can’t ride!’

‘Oh, Annie.’ He wanted to hold her. ‘Riding’s just a job for us. Every morning, day in, day out. We’re all sick to death of it.’

The idea was incomprehensible to Annie. ‘Well,’ she said, ‘I’m going to get Bandit, anyway.’

‘Wait for a bit. It might ease off.’

She shook her head. ‘He’s all wet and cold. I want to see him.’

There was no arguing with her. He found slickers and leggings for them both and they waded down to the paddock beside the green lane. Bandit was standing in the corner with the other horses. The tree they were under gave them no shelter from the rain at all, but as Michael drew near to it he noticed that it was coming into bud.

‘See?’ he said to Annie. ‘The spring’s almost here.’

‘New life,’ said Annie. ‘New hope.’

Bandit whickered gruffly through his nose as they approached through the ink and water dawn. Michael took Annie’s hand and guided it between the rug and the horse’s shoulder. It was warm and dry in there. Annie smiled, conceding his point, but she left her hand where it was, beneath his, for a moment; two moments more.

‘We might as well go out,’ said Michael, as they tied Bandit to the pillar of the hay shed. ‘We’re hardly going to get any wetter.’

‘Yess!’ said Annie.

Michael watched from the grey mare’s box as Annie attempted to tack up the cob. No other horse in the yard would have put up with her. She took his head collar off first, and left him standing free while she tried to make sense of the bridle. Then she put it over his ears, leaving the bit dangling on his nose. On the next attempt she held the bit in both hands and offered it to him as though it was some special kind of treat. The big, kind oaf of a horse took it, but Annie still couldn’t figure out where the other parts went. The bridle was facing backwards. She pulled the noseband over his ears and was trying to thread the throatlatch through it when Michael decided it was time to intervene.

He showed her how it was done. She took it off and put it on again three more times. Bandit didn’t move a muscle, except to let out a colossal, exasperated sigh.

They rode through the newly opened gate and along the green track, splashing through puddles and pools, dislodging the gathered rain from the leaning branches to stream down their waterproofs. Tiny waterfalls ran off the hems of their leggings and the toes of their boots.

They trotted a lot, cantered a bit, Bandit’s great saucepan feet throwing up muddy geysers all around him. By the time they came back, the rain had abruptly stopped and the sun was breaking through. The water lying everywhere across the land mirrored its light. The whole world shone like gold.

While Annie took Bandit back to the field, Michael went in to put the breakfast on. Jean was sitting at a table with a calculator and a cheque book, sorting the paper stack into orderly piles.

‘You never showed me this,’ she said.

Michael glanced at the crumpled letter on the school’s headed paper.

‘I did.’

‘Michael. You didn’t. You didn’t show it to Frank, either.’

‘What’s it doing there, then?’

Jean sighed and walked up behind him. He was dropping sausages into the fat melting in the pan. She put a hand on his shoulder, above the secret tattoo.

‘Is anything bothering you? At school, I mean?’

The hand felt like a claw; a vice; an alien thing. Beneath it, the caduceus burned his flesh.

‘Frank says they’re worried about you.’

A gasket blew in Michael’s head. He elbowed Jean’s arm aside and turned to face her. He was a full head taller.