Ivy Tree (42 page)

A sharp rise, then, away from the trees: and here was the straight, good half-mile across a high heathy pasture where the dry gravel of the track showed white in the lights, and as clear as if it had been marked with cats'-eyes.

The crest of the moor. A single birch tree, its stem flashing white, and then lost again in the darkness behind us. Then the sudden, sharp dip of the descent towards the river, the swift, curling drop into the sheltered saucer of land where West Lodge lay.

I had forgotten just how steep the hill was, and how sharp the turn.

As my lights met the crest of the hill, we must have been doing forty-five. I stood on the brake, but as we switch-backed over the top and dived for the river, we were still travelling like a bomb. The car went down the drop like an aircraft making for the touch-down. I saw the bend coming, drove my foot hard down on the brake, and put everything I had of strength and timing into getting her round the corner. I felt the front wheel mounting the edge, swinging, thrown wide by the force of our turn. I had the steering-wheel jammed hard over to the left. I felt the rear swing, too, mount, pause ... We could do it. We were round ...

On a dry night, we might have done it, even despite my bad judgment. But the track was damp, and the grass; and the wheels, at the very verge, had met mud ...

The front of the car drifted, slid, swam uncontrollably wide. The wheel topped the bank, was over. The car lurched crazily as she hit the rough turf of the slope to the river. The lights struck the water ten yards away, and the mirror-flash startled my eyes.

I must have straightened the wheel instinctively as we left the track, or we would have turned over. As it was, the car plunged down the last four feet of the bank dead straight, in a dive for the river, lurched over a nine-inch drop to the shingle, hit the edge of the drop with her undercarriage, and stopped dead, with the front wheels on the gravel, and the water sliding by not a yard from the bonnet. In the silence after the engine stalled, the river sounded as loud as thunder. I sat there, still gripping the wheel, listening to the tick of cooling metal, and stupidly watching the wipers still wagging to and fro, to and fro, squealing across the dry glass. It had stopped raining some time back, and I hadn't noticed . . .

I don't know how long I sat there. Not more than seconds, I think, though it seemed an age. I was unhurt, and, though I must have been shaken, I had no time to feel it. This was a pause in the movement; no more. I clambered out of the car. The stableyard lay no more than fifty yards away, at the foot of the hill. I retained enough wit to switch the ignition off, and the headlights, and then I abandoned the car, and ran.

•••

I had forgotten the route, and crashed Con's car in consequence, but when I got to the stable door my hand went automatically to the light-switch, and, as the light snapped on, I reached for the bridle without even looking for it. Leather met my hand, and the cool jingle of metal. I lifted it from its peg, and then stood still for a moment or two, controlling my breathing, letting my eyes get used to the light, and the horse used to the sight of me.

It was no use approaching him like this. A few more seconds now, to let my heart slow down to something near its normal rate, and to control my hands ... I hadn't realised, till I lifted down that ringing bridle, that my hands were shaking still.

I leaned back against the wall of the stable, and regarded the Forrest colt. He was in a loose-box opposite the door. He stood across the far corner of it, facing away from me, but with his head round towards me, and ears pricked, inquiring, slightly startled. I began to talk, and the effort to steady my voice steadied me. When I saw the ears move gently, I opened the loose-box and went in.

He didn't move, except to cock his head higher, and a little sideways, so that the great dark eyes watched me askance, showing a rim of white. I slid a gentle hand on to his neck and ran it up the crest towards his ears. He lowered his head then, and snuffled at the breast of my blouse.

I said: "Help me now, Rowan, beauty," and cupped the bit towards him. He didn't even pause to mouth it; he took it like a hungry fish taking a fly. In seven seconds after that, as smoothly as a dream, I had him bridled. In ten more, I was leading him outside into the night. I didn't take time for a saddle. I mounted from the edge of the water-trough, and he stood as quietly as a donkey at the seaside. Then I turned him towards the river. The way led to his pasture, so he went willingly and straight, with that lovely long walk of his that ate up the yards. I made myself sit quietly. Momentarily blinded by the darkness as I was, I could neither guide nor hurry him. I talked to him, of course; it seemed that this was more for my own comfort than the horse's, but it took us both as far as the faint glimmer of the river, where a path turned off towards the pastures, from the foot of the narrow wooden footbridge. Now, I had no idea if I could get Rowan to cross the water which, swelled a bit by the recent thunder-rain, was coming down at a fair speed, and with some sound and fury over its treacherous boulders. It would be bad enough crossing by daylight, and in the dark it was doubly hazardous. But there is no horse living, except a circus horse, that will cross the unsafe echoing of a wooden footbridge—even if I had dared put him at the triple step at either end. It was the water or nothing. At least here we had come out from under the trees, and I could see.

The bank shelved fairly steeply near the bridge. The river was a wide, broken glimmer, with shadows where the boulders thrust up, and luminous streams of bubbling foam where the freshets broke. The sound was lovely. Everything smelt fresh and vivid after the rain. As I put Rowan at the bank I could smell thyme and water-mint, and the trodden turf as his hoofs cut it.

He hesitated on the edge, checked, and began to swerve away. I insisted. Good-manneredly, he turned, hesitated again, then faced the drop of the bank. Then, as his fore-hoofs went down the first foot of the drop, he stopped, and I saw his ears go back.

Now, when one rides without a saddle, there are certain obvious disadvantages, but there is one great advantage—one is with the horse; his muscles are joined to, melted in with, the rider's; the rider is part of the beast's power, moves with him, and can think into his body a vital split-second faster than when the impulse has to be conveyed through reins and heels alone.

I felt the colt's hesitation, doubt, and momentary fear, even before the impulses had taken root in his mind, and my own impulse forward was supplied instantaneously. He snorted, then lunged forward suddenly and slithered down into the water.

I held him together as he picked his way across between the streaming boulders. I was saying love-words that I thought I had forgotten. His hoofs slipped and rang on the stones, and the water swirled, shining, round his legs. It splashed against his fetlocks, then it was to his knees; he stumbled once, and in recovering sent one hoof splodging down into a pool that drenched me to the thigh. But he went steadily on, and in no time, it seemed, the small shingle was crunching under his feet, and we were across. He went up the far bank with a scramble and a heave that almost unseated me, shook his crest, then plunged forward at a rough canter to meet the track.

This ran steeply up, here, from the footbridge, and, though rutted and uneven, lay clearly enough marked in the moonlight between its verges of dark sedge. I twisted my right hand in Rowan's mane, set him at the slope, and gave him his head.

He took it fast, in that eager, plunging canter that, normally, I would have steadied and controlled. But he couldn't, tonight, go fast enough for me . . . and besides, there was this magnificent dreamlike feeling, the flying night, the surging power that was part of me, the drug of speed that felt like speed, the desperate mission soon to be accomplished ...

The canter lengthened, became a gallop; we were up the slope and on the level ground. There was a gate, I knew. We would have to stop and open it. Even if I hadn't been riding barebacked, I couldn't have set him to jump it in the dark. I peered ahead uncertainly, trusting the horse to see it before I did, hoping he knew just where it was ...

He did. I felt his stride shorten, and next moment saw—or thought I saw—the dim posts of a fence, joined with invisible wire, with the shapes of cattle beyond. Across the road, nothing. The way was clear. The gate seemed to be open . .. yes, I could see it now, set to one side of the track, as if it were lying back, wide open.

Rowan flicked his ears forward, then back, and hurtled down the track at full gallop. I had hardly time to wonder, briefly, why the cattle hadn't crowded through the gap, when we were on it, and I saw. The gate for the beasts stood to the side, and was shut, as I should have known it would be. And, clear across the way, where I had thought there was a gap, lay the cattle-grid, eight feet of treacherous, clanging iron grid that, even if it didn't break his legs, would throw us both ... No time to stop him now, or swerve him to face the gate. Two tremendous strides, and he was on it. This time, he thought for me. As the grid gaped in front of his feet, looking, in the dark, like a wide pit across his path, he steadied, lifted, and was over, as smoothly as a swallow in an eddy of air. And then, all at once, ahead of us, were the massed trees, and the lights of Nether Shields.

•••

I learned afterwards that there had been some storm-damage at Nether Shields, and that after the rain was off the men—Mr. Fen wick and his two sons—had come out to take a look round. They were in the yard when I got there, and they must have heard the horse's hoofs coming up the moor at the gallop, for all three were at the gate.

The main track went by some fifty yards from Nether Shields. We cut across the corner, and I sent Rowan headlong for the gate.

It is possible that they thought the horse was bolting with me, for nobody opened the gate. Rowan came to a slithering halt with his breast almost up against the bars, and then, seeing the men, shied violently sideways and began to circle.

Someone swung die gate wide, then, and the three men stood aside. It was all I could do to get Rowan in past them, through the gate, but he went in the end, fighting every inch of the way. One of the men shut the gate behind us, and would have reached for the bridle, but I thought the horse would rear, and said breathlessly: "Leave him. It's all right. Keep back . . ."

Someone said: "It's Forrest's," and another: "It's the Win-slow girl," and then Mr. Fenwick's voice came quickly: "What is it, lass? Trouble?"

I found I could hardly speak. I was breathless from effort, but it wasn't that. My teeth were chattering as if I was chilled. I suppose it was shock catching up on me; my whole body was shaking, now, and the muscles of my thighs felt loose against the restless movements of the colt. I think that if I hadn't had a hand in his mane, I would, shamefully, have fallen off him.

I managed to say, somehow: "There's been an accident at the old lodge. Forrest Hall. A tree's down on the lodge, and someone's hurt, and Mr. Forrest's there too. They're both trapped inside, and if they don't get help soon the whole place looks like coming down on them. The phone's off at Whitescar. Is yours working?"

Mr. Fenwick was a man of swift action and few words. He said merely: "Don't know. Sandy, go and see. Is it for the doctor?"

"Yes. Yes. Tell him a cut artery, we think, and to come quickly. And could you come yourself—all of you, straight away? There's a wall collapsing, and the men underneath, and only Con and Julie there—"

"Aye. Bill, get the Land-Rover out. Ropes, torches, crowbars. Sandy, tell your mother." Sandy went in at a run. Bill had already vanished into a shed whose doors, dragged wide, showed the gleam of the Land-Rover's bonnet.

I slipped off the horse's back, and held him, "Props," I said. "Have you anything to shore the stones up?"

"What sort of length?"

"Short. Just to hold them off a man. He's lying underneath.

A foot, eighteen inches, anything just to hold them clear.**

"Dear God," said the farmer.

"We had fencing-posts, and Con can push them in sideways,'* I said, "but there weren't enough. And some for the passage, too, if you've any longer ones—"

"There's plenty of stuff in the shed, all lengths." He raised his voice above the sudden roar of the Land-Rover's motor. "Put your lights on, Bill!"

The lights shot out. Rowan went back in a clattering roar, almost lifting me from the ground. I saw the farmer turn, and cried: "Never mind! Get on! I can manage him!" The Land-Rover came out of the shed, and stopped just short of the yard gate, with its engine ticking over and its lights full on. Bill jumped out of the front and ran back to where his father was dragging solid lumps of sawn timber from a wood-stack. I saw the gleam of a metal bar, and the shape of a heavy stick, as they were hurled into the back of the vehicle. A couple of what looked like old railway sleepers went in after them.

"The rope from the tractor-shed?" asked Bill.

"Aye." The farmer threw a shovel in after the rest.

Sandy must have told his mother something as he ran to the telephone, for she appeared now in the lighted doorway of the farmhouse. "Miss Winslow? Sandy's told me of the trouble. He's on the telephone now."

"It's worthing?"

"Oh, yes."

"Dear God," I said, meaning it, and put my forehead against Rowan's hot neck.

"My dear," she said, "don't worry. It won't be long. Doctor Wilson's not at home, he's up at Haxby, but Sandy's getting through now. He'll be down at Forrest in something under twenty minutes, and the men will be there in ten. Would you like me to go with them, in case I can help?" There came to me, the first flush or warmth in an Arctic night, a vague memory that before her marriage to Jem Fenwick of Nether Shields, she had been a nurse. He had broken a leg and spent a month in the Royal Victoria, and taken her back with him when he was discharged. A long time ago now, but if the doctor were delayed ...

I cried: "Oh, Mrs. Fenwick, could you go with them? Could you? There's Julie's young man with a cut artery, and Adam Forrest tying to hold it, and the cellar roof going to come down on them, and only Con and Julie there to try and fix it up."