The Horse Dancer (59 page)

‘It’s not just that she doesn’t want to talk about her grandfather, Mac. She doesn’t seem to want to talk at all.’

The police had found her passport, with the empty wallet and a few belongings, on the road to Blois. Even the handing over of the precious dog-eared paperback of Xenophon did not stir her from inertia.

Mac took back his credit card, and thanked Madame, who had insisted on making up a small package of food for the girl. Everyone urged Sarah to eat, Natasha thought, as if food could fill the huge holes that had swallowed her life.

‘She’s exhausted,’ he said. ‘She’s been driven by this idea for the last however long it was, perhaps a lot longer than we know about, and she’s just been told it’s not going to happen. Her grandfather died. She’s ridden five hundred miles or more. She’s shocked, tired and disappointed. And she’s a teenager. I think it’s in the handbook that they’re meant to spend vast swathes of time not talking to you.’

Natasha wrapped her arms around herself. ‘I suppose you’re right.’

The sun emerged sporadically, as if it was playing cat and mouse with the loaded grey clouds, but none of them noticed that the short drive from the château to Le Cadre Noir was picturesque. The gateman had obviously been warned to expect them; Natasha saw him peer curiously at the back seat as they passed through.

Mademoiselle Fournier was waiting for them outside the main stables. She greeted them both with kisses, as if what they had been through had made them familiar to each other, then held Sarah’s shoulders, beaming. ‘How are you feeling today, Sarah?’ she said. ‘I am sure you needed to sleep.’

‘Fine,’ she muttered.

‘You want to see your horse while we are waiting for Monsieur Varjus? Baucher has had a very comfortable night. He must be strong, we think. He is just over here . . .’

She had begun to lead them towards the show block when Sarah cut in: ‘No,’ she said.

There was a brief, awkward silence.

‘I don’t want to. Not now.’

Mac’s apology was audible in his voice. ‘I suspect Sarah is probably waiting to speak to the Grand Dieu.’

Mademoiselle Fournier’s smile did not falter. ‘Of course. I should have thought. If you would follow me?’

The office was lined with photographs, certificates and medals. Natasha watched as Mac examined each image closely.

Monsieur Varjus entered, as if he had just come from some other, more important task. He brought with him another man, whom he introduced as Monsieur Guinot, something to do with the course administration. Sarah sat between her and Mac. She seemed, Natasha observed, to have shrunk in on herself, as if she had decided to take up less space in the world. Natasha’s hand edged towards her, but travelled no further. Since waking that morning, Sarah had reinstated the wall around her. The vulnerability of yesterday had dissolved.

The Grand Dieu was wearing his black uniform, his boots polished to a deep gloss, a flattening of his hair telling of previous hours on horseback. He sat at his desk, and considered Sarah for a moment, as if surprised again that a child of such a size could be responsible for what he had witnessed the day before. He explained in heavily accented English that Le Cadre Noir accepted no more than five new members each year, usually only one or two. There was an exam, overseen by some of the most senior horsemen in the country, for which the minimum age was eighteen. To join, she would not only need to succeed in all these but would have to be a French national.

‘You’ll have that, Sarah, if you were born in France,’ Natasha observed.

Sarah said nothing.

‘All this aside, Mademoiselle, I would like to say that what you did was magnificent. You and your horse. “A good horse makes short miles.” You know who said this? Your George Eliot.’ The old man leant over the desk. ‘If you can fulfil the requirements of our system there is no reason why, within a few years, you and your horse should not return here. You have both ability and courage. To achieve what you have achieved at your age is . . .’ he shook his head ‘. . . something I am still having difficulty in accepting.’

He looked down at his hands. ‘I would also like to tell you that your grandfather was a fine horseman. I was always very sorry that he left. I believe he should have been a
maître écuyer
. He would be very proud of what you have achieved.’

‘But you’re not going to take me.’

‘Mademoiselle, I cannot possibly take a fourteen-year-old girl here. You must understand this.’

Sarah looked away, biting her lip.

Mac spoke: ‘Sarah, you heard what Monsieur Le Grand Dieu said. He thinks you’re very talented. Perhaps we can work out how best you two can keep training and maybe some day you’ll be back here. Tash and I want to help you.’

Sarah was staring at her stark white plimsolls, bought with a change of clothes by Mac that morning. There was a lengthy silence.

Outside, Natasha could hear hooves on concrete, a distant whinny.
Sarah, please say something
.

Sarah looked up at the Grand Dieu. ‘Will you take my horse?’ she said.

‘Pardon?’ The old man blinked.

‘Will you take my horse? Baucher?’

Natasha glanced at Mac, her own confusion reflected on his face. ‘Sarah, you don’t want to give away Boo.’

‘I’m not talking to you,’ she said firmly. ‘I’m talking to him. Do you want him?’

The old man’s eyes flickered towards Natasha’s. ‘I don’t know if now is the time to—’

‘Do you think he’s talented?
Est-ce que vous pensez il est bon?
’

‘
Mais oui. Il a courage aussi, c’est bien
.’

‘Then I give him to you. I don’t want him any more.’

The room fell silent. The man from the administrative section muttered something in the Grand Dieu’s ear.

Natasha leant towards them. ‘Gentlemen, I think Sarah is very tired still – I don’t think she—’

‘Stop telling me what I mean!’ Her voice filled the little room. ‘I’m telling you, I don’t want him any more. Monsieur can have him. Will you take him?’ Her voice was insistent, imperious.

The Grand Dieu looked carefully at Sarah, as if assessing how serious she was. He frowned. ‘This is what you genuinely want? To give him to Le Cadre Noir?’

‘Yes.’

‘Then, yes, I will gratefully accept, Mademoiselle. It is obvious he is a very gifted horse.’

Something in Sarah seemed to relax. She had clenched her jaw so tightly that Natasha could see the outline of a muscle in her cheek. Sarah straightened her shoulders and turned to he. ‘Right. Can we go now?’

It was as if they were all paralysed. Mac’s jaw hung open. Natasha had begun to feel ill. ‘Sarah . . . this is a huge decision. You love that horse. Even I know that. Please take some time to think about it. You’ve been through an awful—’

‘No. I don’t need any time. I just want someone, for once, to listen. Boo is staying here. Now, if we’re going back, I want to go now.
Now
,’ she said, when nobody moved. ‘Or I’ll go by myself.’

It was all the prompt they needed. They rose as one, Mac shooting a bemused look at the old man as he followed Sarah into the sunshine.

‘Madame,’ Le Grand Dieu said, when they were out of Sarah’s earshot. He took her hand in both his own. ‘If she wants to visit him, or even if she changes her mind, it’s fine. She is young. A lot has happened . . .’

‘Thank you,’ Natasha said. She would have said more, but something had lodged at the back of her throat.

He glanced out of the window to where Sarah stood in the sunshine, her arms crossed, kicking at a stone. ‘She is just like her grandfather,’ he said.

The rain began to full in unremitting sheets shortly after they left Saumur, the stormclouds colluding in a forbidding block across the horizon, then scudding towards them. They drove in silence, Mac’s car forging through plumes of surface water, his attention on the road.

Natasha almost envied him: the silence within the little car had become oppressive, the time to be alone with her thoughts unwelcome. Occasionally she would glance up at the mirror on her visor, seeing the reflection of the thin figure on the back seat gazing out at the passing scenery. Sarah’s face was impassive, but the air of misery that hung about her was so overwhelming that it had permeated the whole car. Twice, Natasha had tried to tell Sarah that it was not too late, they could return for the horse, but the first time Sarah had ignored her, and the second she had put her hands over her ears. Natasha was so disturbed by this that her voice had faltered to nothing.

Give her time, she kept telling herself. Put yourself in her shoes. She has lost her grandfather, her home. But she couldn’t make sense of it: why would a girl who had fought so hard to keep her horse, the one thing she had left in all the world, her link with the past and perhaps her future, let it go so casually?

She thought back to the last moments of their visit to Le Cadre Noir. The Grand Dieu had accompanied them to the stables. ‘I would like you to see your horse before you leave, Sarah,’ he said, ‘to ensure you find his condition satisfactory.’

Natasha had guessed his motive: he believed that seeing Boo would change her mind, would force her to contemplate the true ramifications of what she had decided.

But she had walked almost reluctantly towards the stable and stood a few feet back, too far away to see properly over the high door. ‘Please,’ he urged. ‘See how much better he looks this morning. See what our vet has done to his injuries.’

Go on, Sarah, Natasha had urged silently. Wake up. See what you are about to do. She no longer minded the prospect of being responsible for Boo. At that point she would have done anything, anything, to alleviate the girl’s suffering. But Sarah glanced only briefly at the vet’s handiwork. Even when the horse had stuck his head over the door and made a proprietorial sound of greeting, one that had seemed to emanate from deep within his belly, she had not moved towards him. Her shoulders stiffened, her hands pushed a little deeper into her pockets, and then, with the slightest of nods towards the Grand Dieu, she had turned and walked towards the car, as the horse, ears pricked, looked after her.

It was not only Sarah and her losses that preoccupied Natasha. As the rain beat down, obscuring the brake lights of the vehicles ahead and camouflaging the road, she had found herself watching Mac’s hands as they drove closer to Calais. When they left this car in England it would all be over for her too. There would be a negotiated agreement over who occupied the house for its final weeks, some financial discussions, and then he would be gone to his new home, and she would be alone, picking up the pieces of what remained of her life. She had nothing. She had lost her treasured home, jeopardised her career, ruined a potential relationship. She had lost the man she loved. It was a terrible thing to discover you no longer wanted the life that stretched ahead of you.

She closed her eyes. When she opened them, gazing out at the town below the motorway, she caught a glimpse of a girl riding a bicycle, stooped, moving through the empty street with a steady grace that belied the weather. She recalled suddenly the train journey, months before, when she had seen a girl astride a rearing horse in a London back-street. It hadn’t been the unlikeliness that had cemented the image in her mind but the calm, the sense of girl and animal working in harmony. Even in a split second she had recognised that.

And then a voice popped into her head: the strained, high-pitched tones of Constance Devlin, her witness:
It will be surprisingly easy for Lucy to head down the wrong path. All you have to do is stop listening.

‘Mac, stop the car,’ she said suddenly.

‘What?’ said Mac.

‘Stop the car.’ She knew only that she could not allow this journey to continue. Mac pulled up and, as he looked on, confused, she found herself clambering out, opening the rear door. ‘Come on,’ she said to Sarah. ‘You and I need to talk.’

The girl shrank away from her as if she was mad.

‘No,’ Natasha said, not even sure where the words were coming from. ‘We’re not going any further, Sarah, until you and I talk. Come on. With me.’

She took her hand, then pulled her out of the car and through the rain until they reached the awning of a café opposite. She heard Mac’s protest, and her own determination as she told him to leave them alone.

‘Right.’ Natasha pulled out a chair and sat down. There were no other customers; she wasn’t even sure the place was open. Now that she had Sarah here she had no clear idea of what she wanted to say. She just knew she couldn’t go on in that car, surrounded by the waves of pain, of silent suffering, without doing
something
.

Sarah flung her a look of deep distrust and sat down beside her.

‘Okay, Sarah. I’m a lawyer. I spend my life trying to anticipate the games people play, trying to out-think them. I’m a pretty smart judge of character. I can usually work out what makes people tick, but I’m struggling here.’

Sarah stared at the table.

‘I cannot work out why a girl who would lie, steal and cheat to keep a horse, a girl who only had one aim in life, which revolved around that horse, would throw it all away.’

Sarah said nothing. She turned away, her hands resting on her knees.

‘Is this some kind of temper tantrum? Are you thinking that if you throw it all up in the air someone will step in and change the rules for you? Because if it’s that, I can tell you they’re not going to change anything. Those men work according to principles set down three hundred years ago. They won’t shift them for you.’

‘I never asked them to shift anything,’ she snapped.

‘Okay, then. You don’t think they’re telling the truth when they say you’ll be good enough one day? I don’t know, perhaps you can’t be bothered to try?’

She didn’t reply.

‘Is it about your grandpa? Are you afraid you can’t look after the horse without his help? Because we can help you there, Sarah. I know you and I haven’t got off to the best start but that – that was because we weren’t honest with each other. I think we can improve that.’