The Grave Maurice (30 page)

They were trudging across the rain-drenched land. “You always were nice. You have no idea how much Granddad likes you. More, I sometimes think, than he likes Dad. Certainly more than Uncle Danny, whom he thought a great jockey but not a nice person. It really hurt him to think that about his own son.”

“I doubt he's as fond of me as you think. You should hear him talk to me.”

“You don't get it. You're the only one he
does
talk to that way. I remember him saying once, ‘You can always depend on that nut Vern.' ”

“Oh, thanks.” Vernon laughed.

They had reached the barn and gone in. Nell moved down the row of stalls, forking the hay into racks. She stumbled and nearly went down and Vernon took the pitchfork from her. “You're too tired to do this. You looked like you could have used a week's sleep when you showed up. Last night certainly didn't make up for it.”

Nell thought:
But it did. It made up for a dozen things; it made up for being by myself for two years; it made up for being the only company these horses ever had; it made up for being in limbo for so long; it made up for things you'll never know and, because of that, never understand.
She said none of this; what she said was, “Last night didn't tire me out; it made me feel better.”

“Glad of it,” he said, pouring oats into one of the buckets. The horse, Daisy, didn't seem to mind his presence. Beyond a few shakes of her mane and a bit of stamping she seemed perfectly relaxed.

Nell stood back, rocking a little on her heels, enjoying watching him fork hay into the racks, getting more on the floor than in the rack, trying to keep a distance between himself and the mild-mannered mares.

When it was done, Vernon said, “Backbreaking. My Lord, Nellie, I hope this isn't what you were doing as Lady Hobbs's indentured servant.” He waved her toward him. “Come on, let's eat. I'm starved.”

He got the hamper out of the back, and the horse blanket, which he shook out on the ground. He set the hamper down and took out the provisions, one provision being a bottle of a very good burgundy. Bobby was a wine expert, not because he drank it, which he hardly ever did, but because he traded in it. Bobby was an authority on anything he traded in. So was Daphne.

“I can't believe you went to all this trouble,” said Nell, unwrapping a chunk of Cheshire cheese and a slab of cheddar.

Vernon was uncorking the wine. “Me? No, it was Bobby who went to the trouble.”

“Well, it wasn't Bobby who thought of it, and it's
so
nice. A picnic in January.”

He drew the cork from the bottle, saying, “You deserve a lot more than a picnic in January.”

Unbidden, the thought flew into her mind.
No, I don't.
She had not expunged the sight of that musty attic room from her thoughts. No matter how much it receded, as if it were an image in a rearview mirror, it still caught up with her whenever her guard was down—hot, sweaty, implacably vile. She had been little more than contraband in that house. And following fast on the heels of the image was the question:
Had it happened at all?
It was like looking through fog.

When she looked up, she saw Vernon watching her. His clear gray eyes were sharp, like diamonds.

“Nellie, what else? There's something else?”

She lowered her eyes to the cheese she still held and shrugged. “No?”

He laughed. “You tell me.”

She felt herself slip away and was afraid, when that happened, as it had many times before, that she was losing her mind. Vernon wouldn't press her for an answer, she knew. She felt that tightness in her throat that was the advent of tears.
Don't cry,
she commanded herself.
If you do, it will all tumble out.
If that happens, you cannot go back; he will cut you loose.
Absurd!
She knew it was absurd.

When she looked up, she saw Vernon still watching her. He did not look away. Slowly, he chewed a sandwich.

Blushing, she said this much: “I just wonder sometimes if I'm crazy, if I'm round the bend, as they say.”

“Why?” He poured wine and handed her a plastic glass.

Nell looked off into blankness, saw trees, hedges, barn as items arranged on a picture postcard. “I feel sometimes as if things weren't real. As if I were seeing pictures of things, as if the scene weren't really there.”

Vernon drank some wine, said, “Maybe it's me.”
“You?”
She was astonished he'd think this. “Vernon, you're the only real thing here!” Grabbing back that sentiment, she added, “Along with the horses, of course.”

He laughed. “That's a compliment, for sure, to be as real to you as the horses.”

Nell relaxed. The danger had been circumvented, and they ate and drank in one of those blessed silences, broken only by the sounds coming from the barn.

He said, “Listen, I'll bargain with you. I'll take on Wyeth Labs if you'll tell your dad and Arthur you're back.”

“But—”

Vernon shook his head, hard. “No. No ‘buts,' Nellie. You'll do it, and the sooner, the better. Like today.”

Adrenaline sluiced through her veins. She said nothing.

“You shouldn't mind now because we're going to get those mares away from Hobbs's place.” But that, Vernon thought, wasn't the all of it; the horses were only part of it. She was ashamed; he could sense it. She was ashamed to go back and it wasn't because she could have done it sooner. No, the shame was something else, and it was probably accompanied by these periods of disorientation she was talking about because she wanted to get rid of it, to have the shame out of her head and her life. But he would get nowhere by questioning her, even if he had a mind to; it would simply drive that part of her back into hiding.

“All right, I'll go back. But not today, Vern, please not today. I need to get myself ready for it, you know, psyched up.” She picked up a smoked salmon sandwich, looked at it as if it might hold a clue to something she'd forgotten and took a bite.

They went on with their picnic, Nell turning to listen to the mares, any little sounds of impatience or distress. “They need some exercise, some freedom. What I do is, I take turns riding them and the others look for graze, pretty hard to find in January, but they always find something. I don't ride Daisy because she needs to stay near Charlie. And of course, Aqueduct has to be ridden; he's used to hard riding. At least he was once.”

Vernon asked, “Why did they take Aqueduct?”

Nell was inspecting another sandwich. “Aqueduct's a 'chaser. He can jump over almost anything. Hadrian's walls, you know. Then I'd guess they wanted a horse who'd been successful at stud. I don't know.” She looked at Vernon as she finished off her mystery sandwich and smiled. “You can ride with me. You
can
ride, that I know. You used to chase me, remember?”

It was abysmally sad, the way she spoke of this, as if her childhood had been swallowed up by her experience and her adolescence shattered like glass. “Caught you, too,” he said.

“Never.” She grinned.

“Bet?” He held up a chocolate hazelnut tart.

“I can have the whole thing if I win?”

“Most of it.”

She got up from the blanket. “You can ride Aqueduct and I'll ride one of the mares.”

“Those poor horses are in pretty bad shape. And how could they beat Aqueduct?”

“Oh, I wonder.”

“The sinister implication being not if I'm riding him?” They walked toward the barn. “You have enough tack?”

“Uh-huh.”

“Bits? Bridles? Saddles?”

“Yes.”

Inside the barn, Nell went into a stall that held a beautiful bay. “This one, I think, might be one of those French saddle horses. They're especially good jumpers. And she's had three weeks to build up some strength. Her name's Lili.”

Vernon was leaning against the half door, arms crossed over the top of it. “Why would you want a jumper?”

“Only because Aqueduct is. It evens things out.”

“Why? Are we doing any jumping?”

“No, but you never know.”

“Then the answer's not no, it's ‘maybe.' ”

She laughed. “You really don't want to compete, do you?”

“No, but we won't let that stop us.”

Nell was fitting a bit into the mare's mouth. Over her arm was a saddle.

“All of this gear has gone unused for God knows how long,” said Vernon. “But it looks shiny new.”

“I've been cleaning it, polishing it up.”

She had led the mare out of the stable by now. Aqueduct was already out, eating oats from the bucket Vernon had left there. He was chewing solemnly and looking at Vernon.

Aqueduct snorted.

T
he kid with the purple hair (hadn't that punk style gone out of punk fashion yet?) and wearing outsized earphones on the other side of the aisle was entranced by whatever he was listening to, his eyes closed, his fingers rapping on the small table on which sat his CD player. Music—though strictly speaking, it was likely not even music—leaked out around the earphones, trying to escape itself probably.

The scene reminded Jury of a similar one in Stratford-upon-Avon a few years back, and similarly having to do with trains and platforms, in which another lad with dyed hair and a boom box was playing (incredibly enough) a song sung by a French chanteuse, in heartbreaking accents of a love gone wrong and to which she was bidding her painful
adieu.
It was the only word he recognized in addition to
amour
and
j'amais.
But love songs being universally translatable along lines of hello and good-bye, usually the latter, Jury understood her sentiments perfectly. Yes, that was exactly how it felt; God only knew he'd felt it often enough. That time had been a bad one for Jury. He had lost someone he felt he couldn't afford to. It had been January then, too. Or March? Did this music presage another loss? Was the lad some winter angel appointed to appear in Jury's life when things were coming undone?

What was it this time, though? Or perhaps it was simply a cumulative process of undoing, a little unraveling here, a little there. Life sometimes seemed so fragile and weightless; it would blow away if he breathed on it.

But what was blowing away? What was wrong? Aside from the fact he seemed destined to listen to another man's music.

The boy adjusted his earphones and the music spiked. Some group. Heavy thrumming. Jury would never be able to identify them; he couldn't even recognize the groups of his own youth, much less the current ones.

An attendant came through trundling a well-stocked trolley: sandwiches, tea, coffee, soft drinks, crisps. Everything about the trains now was shipshape and Bristol fashion, clean as a newborn babe. Hell, you could change a baby on the floor without fear of germs. He bought some tea and a cheese salad sandwich he didn't want.

He went back to his ruminations over this day spent in the company of the charming Sara Hunt and the almost-otherworldliness of the faded gardens, the crumbling stone, the unpolished silverplate, the rose pattern of the slipcovered chairs worn to liquidity—everything in need of tending.

Jury tried to reweave the unraveling tapestry. Living in that big house was, he thought, a rather Victorian notion, a woman mourning the death of her beloved. Wouldn't it have been easier merely to put the pictures away instead of hiding them behind others? But that was the point, he reminded himself. She was stubborn; she would not give in; she would chance it. He leaned his head against the cold glass and watched the frosty pastures and fences pass. The fields looked antediluvian, left over, dead, nothing growing, nothing grown. A strange image. Jury closed his eyes, went back to Dan Ryder and Sara. The thing was, why should she even hide the fact they'd been lovers? She must have been aware he was the consummate bed hopper. It was public knowledge—well, at least the public who lived with one foot in the racing world. Dan Ryder slept around; Dan Ryder was—to use a Victorian appellation—a bounder. It could be pride on her part, of course; that might make sense of the end of the affair, of being dumped, but did not explain its beginning. There would have been no reason to keep quiet over that.

Jury realized he was basing this on intuition rather than hard evidence. No matter; intuition had eventually brought in the hard evidence.

The London train slowed and stopped at a station Jury could not pronounce, and the boy removed the headphones and darted out to a kiosk on the platform. Jury watched him buy a candy bar and a packet of cigarettes. The kiosk fellow carefully smoothed out the bill the lad had handed him, reached round to the cartons displayed in the back and handed over the cigarettes.

The boy had forgotten to turn off the CD player and the headset squawked with antimusic before segueing into the next piece, but still kept to its slightly tinny, raspy tone. He caught some of the words; it was a love song, surprisingly. Jury thought about Nell's singing to the horses. What had it been? “Love Walked In”?

Love at first sight: it was a concept Jury had no trouble believing in. He had never understood it, how one person (such as he) could react with such certainty to another (such as he had to several women he'd known).

One look—as the song said—was all it had taken to fall for Vivian Rivington. That was years back. Helen Minton, Nell Healy, Jane Holdsworth—same thing. He had never really understood why so much of psychology refuted such an immediate attachment as shallow, banal, sentimental, romantic and adolescent. (He also thought that adolescence came in for too much of a bad rap.) Jury believed that love could of course come about along those lines that most people approved—that of knowing a person for some time before discovering one was in love. It struck Jury as dreary, rather like buying a car and not having to make payments on it for a year or two.