The Horse Dancer (30 page)

Mac, trying not to look, took out another. ‘I think this one was . . .’

‘Shoulder-in,’ she said.

‘
Je ne peux pas voir
,’ the old man said. He waited patiently while Sarah placed his glasses on his face, then gestured to Mac to move the print closer. Mac held up another beside it. The Captain nodded his approval.

‘These are all for your room,’ Mac said, and reached into his pocket for the Blu-Tack. He began to stick the pictures carefully around the bed, slowly obscuring the blank, pale green walls, which had been enlivened only by a 1980s watercolour print and a notice entreating visitors ‘Please wash your hands’. A couple more he affixed to the end of the Captain’s bed.

He watched carefully, gazing at each in turn as if he was drinking in every last detail. He would stare at them all day, Mac guessed.

When he had told Sarah what he was going to do, during the drive over here, she had examined the pictures in stunned silence. ‘That okay?’ Mac had said, worried by her lack of response. ‘I didn’t include any of the ones of you doing things you’re not meant to do, the going-up-on-his-back-legs and stuff.’

She smiled at him, but it was a sad smile. ‘Thank you,’ she said. Her voice suggested she had not seen many unexpected acts of generosity, had expected even fewer.

‘And I’ve saved the best until last.’ Mac unwrapped the one he’d had framed. Even Sarah had not seen it. It was not expensive, just a lightweight wood frame and cardboard mount, but behind the polished glass, the photograph of the girl, her cheek pressed to that of her horse, was bright and clearly defined enough for the old man to make out every detail. It captured her vulnerability, the strangeness of a face that hadn’t quite decided whether it was going to be beautiful, pressed in a kind of ethereal communion to the Stubbsian finesse of the horse’s bone structure. The monochrome, the high resolution, gave the two faces dignity, mystery, which would have been absent in colour. It was one of his best works, Mac knew. He had known it almost as soon as he had taken it. When he had seen the finished print, his heart had skipped a beat.

‘Baucher,’ the Captain said, still staring at the picture. ‘Sarah.’ He pronounced it ‘Sara’.

‘I love that picture,’ Mac said. ‘It was just before we left the yard one morning last week. She didn’t even know I was taking it. I love the way the light from Sarah’s face moves on to the horse’s. The way their eyes are both half closed, like they’re somewhere else in their heads.’

The man at the gallery had thought so too. He wanted to show the work, he had told Mac. He loved it. A part of London that was disappearing, he said. Echoes of the Dublin horse children. But better. He had suggested a price for each work that made Mac’s eyes widen.

‘They may appear in an exhibition in the spring, if that’s okay with you, but these copies are yours. I thought it would be nice for you to have something to look at . . .’

There was a long silence. Mac wasn’t someone to whom uncertainty came often but now he felt its chill. It’s too much, he thought. I’m simply reminding him of what he has lost. He’s afraid I’m exploiting her. Who was he, anyway, to come in here like Lord Bountiful, taking over the old man’s space, deciding what he should spend his days looking at? Was plastering his walls with these pictures – a world he could not enjoy – rubbing his nose in his immobility?

Mac took a pace towards the wall. ‘I mean, if it’s too much I can—’

The old man was gesturing to him, beckoning him closer. As Mac stooped, he took Mac’s hand between his own and pressed it. His eyes were moist. ‘
Merci
,’ he whispered huskily. ‘
Merci, Monsieur
.’

Mac swallowed hard. ‘It’s nothing,’ he said, forcing a casual smile. ‘I’ll do you some more next week.’

It was only then that he noticed Sarah. Unusually, she had barely spoken all evening. She was still leaning against her grandfather, her hand wrapped tightly around his arm, as if she did not want to leave him again. Her eyes were tight shut and her face was tilted away. A solitary tear trickled down her cheek, illuminated by the strip lighting. She was a startling picture of misery.

She was such a self-contained girl, so practical, so obsessed with her horse, that sometimes Mac forgot how lost she must feel. How much she must miss the grandfather she had spent her childhood with. He felt awkward again and shoved the Blu-Tack back into his bag.

‘Anyway,’ he said, I’ll meet you downstairs, Sarah, if that’s okay. Fifteen minutes?’

He placed the framed picture on the bed and left the room, haunted by his last image of the old man, perplexed, his trembling hand lifting towards his granddaughter’s hair, her face buried in his shoulder as she tried to hide her tears.

 

 

 

A few years previously, when Mac and Natasha had first moved into their street, the neighbourhood had been described, optimistically, as ‘up and coming’. If that was so, she had thought at the time, it was some way from arriving. The street was characterised by a shabby uniformity. Three-quarters of the houses had not seen fresh paint in five, perhaps ten years. Outside, on a road with no yellow lines, defunct cars without wheels stood on bricks, while dented hatchbacks ferried young families to and from their chores.

The houses, their stucco Victorian frontages cracked and peeling, stood back from small front gardens, with perhaps an errant privet hedge, a motorbike covered with a tarpaulin or a few dustbins with ill-matched, collapsing lids. She often paused to chat to her neighbours, Mr Tomkins, the elderly West Indian painter, Mavis and her cats, the housing-association family with eight gap-toothed children. They had been companionable, commented on the weather, enquired what Mac was doing to the house now, whether she knew about the plans to introduce residents’ parking, that a Buddhist centre had moved into the high street. As far as any road in the capital had a sense of community, this one did.

Now Mr Tomkins was gone, Mavis was long buried, and the housing association had sold off its interests, its tenants shipped to God only knew where. Now nearly all the houses were painted porcelain white, their cracks carefully filled, their front doors tasteful colours from Farrow and Ball. Topiary yew or bay trees flanked the front steps, and half of the little gardens had become smartly cobbled driveways, or were hemmed in by unfriendly glossy ironwork. Outside stood oversized 4×4s, glossy Mercedes estates. Stressed professionals nodded a brief greeting to each other as they hurried to and from the station, the size of their mortgages guaranteeing that there was little time for more.

It was an affluent street, throwing its remaining few long-term inhabitants into sharp relief, their peeling windows and net curtains like remnants of a former age.

Financially Natasha knew she had benefited from this process of gentrification, but in her gut she felt a deep unease at the polarisation of her world. It was now a street that mirrored its neighbours, little oases of aspirational middle-classness, ringed by estates that conspired to look darker, harder and more threatening, populated by people with fewer and fewer chances to escape.

The two worlds never collided now, unless it was through the criminal (the latest stolen car or burglary, a purse snatched at the mini-mart), the commercial (everyone had a cleaner, or a childminder, of course) or the structurally formalised (Natasha, representing a twelve-year-old whose alcoholic parents refused to take him home).

Natasha thought of this now as she drove into the Sandown estate, past the burnt-out cars and flickering street-lights. Sarah sat silently beside her, clutching her keys. She had not spoken since they left her grandfather’s ward, and Natasha, still shocked by what she had seen, had not attempted to make her. Nothing had confirmed the magnitude, the foolhardiness of what they had taken on, more than the sight of the old man, his frail neck supported by pillows, his face sagging slightly on one side.

‘He’s getting there,’ the stroke nurse had said cheerfully. ‘We’ve come a long way, haven’t we, Henry?’

‘Henri,’ Sarah had growled. ‘It’s pronounced Henri. He’s French.’

The nurse had raised her eyebrows at Natasha as she walked out.

‘How – how long do you think he’ll have to be here?’ Natasha had hurried after the woman while Sarah greeted her grandfather.

The nurse had looked at her as if she was a little backward. ‘He’s had a stroke,’ she explained. ‘It’s a how-long-is-a-piece-of-string question.’

‘But you must be able to give me some idea. Days? Weeks? Months? We’re . . . looking after his granddaughter so it would be good to have some idea.’

The nurse glanced back. Sarah was tidying her grandfather’s bedclothes, talking to him while he watched her steadily. ‘You really need to speak to his consultant, but I can tell you it’s definitely not days,’ she said. ‘And I wouldn’t put money on weeks either. He suffered a severe stroke, and he still requires a lot of rehabilitation.’

‘Is it something . . . a young person could manage? His care?’

The nurse pulled a face. ‘Someone of her age? No. We wouldn’t recommend it. It’s way too much responsibility for a child. At the moment Mr Lachapelle still has hemiparesis – that’s weakness – down one side. He needs help washing, getting on and off the lavatory. We’ve had a few problems with bedsores and his language isn’t a hundred per cent. He’s having physiotherapy twice a day. He can feed himself now, though.’

‘Will he stay here?’

‘We’re a long-term unit. I don’t think it would be appropriate to put him in a care home yet, not while he’s still improving.’ She checked her watch. ‘I’m sorry, I have to go. But he is progressing. I think the pictures helped, funnily enough. Gave him something to focus on. We all like them.’

Natasha look back at the little side-room, at Mac’s work all over the walls. This other Mac again, charming the nurses, helping the sick, even in his absence.

They pulled into the sprawling estate and drove to the Helmsley House car park. It had started to rain, and a few of the youths Natasha had seen the first time she had met Sarah were sheltering under hoodies, flicking matches at each other. They watched her get out of the battered Volvo, but were distracted when someone’s phone rang.

‘What is it you wanted to pick up again?’ Natasha walked behind Sarah up the dank stairwell. The rain hissed around them, pouring through broken guttering, swirling into drains blocked by crisps packets and chewing-gum.

‘Just a few books,’ she said, and added something else that Natasha could not hear.

They walked along the balcony, unlocked the door and closed it swiftly behind them, Natasha grateful for the solid protection of Mac’s iron brace on the frame. Inside, the flat was cold. Sarah had last been here several weeks previously, with Ruth the social worker, and they had turned off the heating and collected more of Sarah’s things. She disappeared into her bedroom now, while Natasha stood in the front room. It was tidy, but bore the chilled, neglected air of a long-empty home. All the photographs had been removed, either to Sarah’s room at their house or to the hospital ward, and the walls were blank and unfriendly.

She heard the sound of drawers being opened and closed, and the zip of a holdall. Sarah would not be returning to this home, she was sure. Even if the old man recovered he couldn’t manage those stairs. The thought hung heavily on her. Did Sarah realise this? She was an intelligent girl. What did she think would happen to her?

She caught sight of a photograph that had not been moved – on the hall wall, of Sarah, three or four years old, being held by a grey-haired woman with a smile that matched Sarah’s. She was like any other child: safe, anchored in the embrace of her family, her clear eyes untainted by fear or uncertainty. Within a matter of years she had become dependent on the kindness of strangers.

Natasha’s head sank into her hands. This was the downside of parenting, the utter, utter responsibility for someone else’s happiness.

‘I tell you what, let’s go out to eat,’ Natasha said, as they climbed back into the car, brushing raindrops from their sleeves. ‘How d’you fancy a pizza?’

Sarah looked sideways at her and Natasha realised, with shame, that she was surprised by this casual invitation. She had seemed withdrawn the past few days, even by her self-contained standards. She had asked to eat alone in her room twice, and barely communicated, even with Mac, who had previously made her laugh.

Natasha thought back to what her sister had said. It was her responsibility to do something, at least to try. ‘Go on. I don’t fancy cooking, and it’s been a long evening. I know a nice place at the far end of the high street.’ She tried to sound cheerful, relaxed. God, it would have been so nice if Sarah could show some enthusiasm, even pleasure. How often had she gone out in her old life, for goodness’ sake? ‘The pizzas are pretty good,’ she said.

Sarah clutched her holdall on her lap. ‘Okay,’ she said.

The restaurant was only half full, and they were shown to a table near the window. Natasha ordered garlic bread and two colas, while Sarah gazed out at the busy, darkened street, the holdall tucked neatly under her chair. She chose a ham and pineapple pizza from the menu, then barely touched it, picking at the slices so slowly that Natasha wondered whether she was developing an eating disorder.

‘So,’ she said, when the silence between them became uncomfortable, ‘have you always been interested in horses?’

Sarah nodded, pushing a piece of mozzarella across her plate.