The Horse Dancer (3 page)

There was a ripple of laughter. Henri, half blinded by the floodlights, glanced at Phantasme, whose whitened eye was rolling with a mixture of nerves and barely suppressed fury. A naturally acrobatic horse, he disliked being held so firmly at his head, and the noise, sounds and smells of Le Carrousel seemed to have exacerbated his already bad temper.

Henri touched the horse’s tense shoulder. ‘Sssh,’ he murmured. ‘It’s okay. It’s okay.’ He glimpsed the quick smiles of Duchamp and Varjus, the two men at Phantasme’s head. They were both effective horsemen, quick to respond to a horse’s mercurial change in mood.

‘Sit deep, eh?’ Varjus said, grinning, as he gave him a leg up. ‘
Un, deux, trois . . . hup
.’

The horse was radiating tension. This is good, Henri told himself, as he straightened in the saddle. The adrenalin will give him greater height. It will look better for the crowd, for Le Grand Dieu. He forced himself to breathe deeply. It was then, as he folded his hands at the small of his back in the traditional passive position that always reminded him uncomfortably of a captive, that Henri looked down to the near side and realised who had been stationed at Phantasme’s rear.

‘Shall we see what kind of rider you really are, Lachapelle?’ Picart said.

He had no time to respond. He lengthened his legs as far as possible, clasped his gloved hands behind him. He heard the announcer say something else, and felt the expectant hush in the arena.

Varjus glanced behind him. The
terre à terre
was building beneath him. ‘
Un, deux, derrière!
’

He felt the horse building in impulsion, heard the sudden
thwack
as Picart’s whip met its quarters. Phantasme bucked, rear end shooting up, and Henri was pitched forward, whiplashed so that he only just managed to maintain the clasp of his hands behind him. The horse steadied, and there was a burst of applause.

‘Not bad, Lachapelle,’ he heard Varjus mutter, braced against Phantasme’s chest.

And then, suddenly, before he had time to prepare, there was another cry of ‘
Derrière!
’ Phantasme’s back legs were shooting him up and forward so that this time Henri’s arms flew out to the sides as he tried to maintain his balance.

‘Not so soon, Picart. You’re unseating him.’

Disoriented, Henri heard Varjus’s irritated voice, the horse’s barely contained squeal as his back braced beneath him. ‘Two seconds. Give me two seconds,’ he muttered, trying to right himself. But before he could do so he heard another
thwack
. It came down hard from above, and this time the horse’s buck was huge; he felt himself pitched forward again, the abrupt, disconcerting distance between his seat and the saddle.

Phantasme threw himself sideways now, furious and the men struggled to hold the horse’s head. Varjus hissed something Henri could not hear. They were near the red curtain. He glimpsed Florence in her yellow dress, could see her confusion and concern. And then: ‘
Enfin! Derrière!
’ Before he could reposition himself there was another loud smack behind him. He was thrown forward again, his back twisting, and Phantasme, infuriated by this injudicious use of the whip, leapt forwards and sideways just at the point that Henri finally lost his balance. He was on the horse’s plaited poll, he was upside down, reaching for Phantasme’s neck as the horse bucked again, before – with an audible
ouf
– he hit the floor.

Henri lay there, dimly aware of the commotion in the arena: Varjus swearing, Picart protesting, the announcer laughing. As he lifted his head from the sand, he could just make out the words: ‘And there you go. A very hard movement to sit. Better luck next year, Monsieur Lachapelle, eh? You see,
mesdames et messieurs
, sometimes it takes many years of practice to reach the very high standards of the
maîtres écuyers
.’

He heard the
un, deux, trois
and Varjus was at his side, hissing at him to
remount, remount
. He glanced down, realising that his immaculate black uniform was covered with sand. Then he was up on the horse, hands at his legs, his feet, and they were walking out of the arena to sympathetic applause. It was the most painful sound he had ever heard.

He was numb with shock. Ahead, he was aware of a low argument between Varjus and Picart, but he could barely hear it above the roaring of the blood in his ears.

‘What was that?’ Varjus was shaking his head. ‘Nobody has ever fallen off during La Croupade. You made us look stupid.’ It was a moment before Henri grasped that Varjus was addressing Picart.

‘It’s not my fault if the only thing Lachapelle can ride is an English whore.’

Henri slid off the horse and walked up to Picart, his ears ringing. He was not even aware of the first punch, just of the loud crack as his knuckles met the man’s teeth, an almost satisfying give within the sound, a physical knowledge that something had been broken, long before pain raised the possibility that it might have been his hand. Horses shrieked and leapt apart. Men shouted. Picart was splayed on the sand, his hand pressed to his face, eyes wide with shock. Then he scrambled to his feet, launched himself at Henri and head-butted him in the chest, winding him. It was a move that might have felled a bigger man, and Henri was only five feet eight, but he had had the benefit of a childhood in which beatings were common-place, and six years in the National Guard. Within seconds he was atop Picart, his fists flying into the younger man’s face, cheeks and chest, with all the rage of the past few months.

His knuckles met something hard and splintered. His left eye closed as a vicious blow met it. There was sand in his mouth. And then hands were dragging him off, batting at him, voices scolding, raised in disbelief.

‘Picart! Lachapelle!’

As his vision blurred and righted, as he stood, spitting and swaying, the hands gripping his arms, his ears still filled with the string adagio from beyond the curtain, Le Grand Dieu was standing in front of him, his face bright with rage.
‘What. On earth. Is this?’

Henri shook his head, noting the spray of blood as he did so. ‘Sir . . .’ He was panting, only now becoming aware of the magnitude of his mistake.

‘Le Carrousel!’ Le Grand Dieu hissed. ‘The epitome of grace and dignity.
Of discipline
. Where is your self-control? You two have brought shame on us. Get back to the stables. I have a performance to finish.’

He mounted his horse as Picart staggered past, a handkerchief pressed to his ashen face. Henri watched him go. Slowly it dawned on him that the arena beyond the curtain was strangely quiet. They had seen, he realised with horror. They knew.

‘Two paths.’ Le Grand Dieu looked down at him from the Portuguese stallion. ‘Two paths, Lachapelle. I told you the last time. It was your choice.’

‘I cannot—’ he began.

But Le Grand Dieu had already ridden out into the floodlights.

 

 

 

The six forty-seven to Liverpool Street was heaving. It seemed ridiculous that a train should be this busy so early in the morning. Natasha Macauley sat down, already overheated despite the cool of early morning, muttering an apology to a woman who had to move her jacket out of the way. The besuited man who had got on behind her forced himself into a gap between the passengers opposite, and promptly unfolded his newspaper, oblivious to the woman whose paperback he partially obscured.

It was an unusual route for her to take to work: she had spent the night at a hotel in Cambridge after a legal seminar. A satisfying number of business cards from solicitors and barristers lay in her jacket pocket; they had congratulated her on her speech, then suggested future meetings and possible work. But the cheap white wine that had flowed so freely now caused her stomach to gripe and she wished, briefly, that she had found time for breakfast. She did not normally drink, and it was hard to keep track of her consumption at events when her glass was perpetually topped up while she was distracted by conversation.

Natasha clutched her scalding polystyrene cup of coffee and glanced down at her diary, promising herself that at some point today she would carve out a space longer than half an hour in which to clear her head. Her diary would contain an hour in the gym. She would take an hour for lunch. She would, as her mother admonished,
take care of herself
.

But for now it read:

 

Every page, for at least a fortnight ahead, was a relentless, endlessly reworked series of lists. Her colleagues at Davison Briscoe had largely switched to electronic devices – handheld jotters and BlackBerrys – with which to navigate their lives, but she preferred the simplicity of pen and paper, even though Linda complained that her schedules were unreadable.

Natasha sipped her coffee, noticed the date and winced. She added

 

The train rumbled towards London, the flatlands of Cambridgeshire seguing into the grey, industrial outskirts of the city. Natasha stared at her paperwork, struggling to focus. She was facing a woman who seemed to think it was okay to eat a hamburger with extra cheese for breakfast, and a teenager whose blank expression was curiously at odds with the thumping emanating from his earphones. It was going to be an unforgivingly hot day: the heat seeped into the packed carriage, transferred and amplified by the bodies.

She closed her eyes, wishing she could sleep on trains, then opened them at the sound of her mobile phone. She rummaged in her bag, locating it between her makeup and her wallet. A text message flashed up:

 

For the past four years Natasha had been Davison Briscoe’s sole solicitor advocate, a solicitor-barrister hybrid that had proved useful when it came to her speciality, representing children. They were less fazed to appear in court beside the woman in whose office they had already explained themselves. For her part, Natasha liked being able to build relationships with her clients and still enjoy the more adversarial elements of advocacy.

 

she texted back, with a sigh of relief. Then she cursed silently; she needn’t have missed breakfast after all.

She was about to put her phone away when it rang again. Ben, her trainee: ‘Just wanted to remind you that we – ah – rescheduled that Pakistani girl for ten thirty.’

‘The one whose parents are fighting care proceedings?’ Beside her, a woman coughed pointedly. Natasha glanced up, saw ‘No Mobile Telephones’ etched on the window, dipped her head and rifled through her diary. ‘We’ve also got the parents from the child-abduction case in at two. Can you dig out the relevant paperwork?’ She murmured.

‘Done it. And I got some croissants,’ Ben added. ‘I’m assuming you won’t have had anything.’

She never had. If Davison Briscoe ever abandoned the trainee system she suspected she would starve to death.

‘They’re almond. Your favourite.’

‘Slavish crawling, Ben, will get you a long way.’

Natasha closed the phone, and then her case. She had just pulled the girl’s paperwork from her briefcase when her phone rang again.

This time there was audible tutting. She mumbled an apology, without looking anyone in the eye. ‘Natasha Macauley.’

‘Linda. Just had a call from Michael Harrington. He’s agreed to act for you in the Persey divorce.’

‘Great.’ It was a big-money divorce, with complicated custody issues. She had needed a heavyweight barrister to take the financial side.

‘He wants to discuss a few matters with you this afternoon. You free at two?’

She was considering this when she became aware that the woman beside her was muttering, her tone unfriendly.

‘I’m pretty sure that’s okay.’ She remembered her diary was back in her briefcase. ‘Oh. No. I’ve got someone in.’

The woman tapped her on the shoulder. Natasha placed her hand over the receiver. ‘I’ll be two seconds,’ she said, more brusquely than she had intended. ‘I know this is a non-mobile carriage and I’m sorry, but I do need to finish this call.’

She stuck the phone between ear and shoulder, struggled to find her diary, then spun round in exasperation when the woman tapped her again.

‘I said I’ll only—’

‘Your coffee is on my jacket.’

She glanced down. Saw the cup balanced precariously on the hem of the cream jacket. ‘Ah. Sorry.’ She picked it up. ‘Linda, can we switch this afternoon around? I must have a gap somewhere.’

‘Hah!’

Her secretary’s cackle rang in her ears after she had snapped shut her phone. She crossed out the court appearance in her diary, added the meeting and was about to put it back in her bag when something in the newspaper headline opposite caught her eye.

She leant forwards, checking that she had read the name in the first paragraph correctly. She leant so far forwards that the man holding the newspaper lowered it and frowned at her. ‘I’m sorry,’ she said, still transfixed by the story. ‘Could I – could I have a very quick look at your paper?’