The House at World's End (15 page)

‘Who’s riding it?’

‘I am.’ Carrie wanted to look at the jumps not talk.

‘Like that?’

Carrie was wearing jeans and Wellingtons, a white shirt of Tom’s. ‘I got too hot.’ (It was raining.) ‘I took off my jacket.’

‘Where’s your cap?’

‘I lost it. I was going to ask you. Your number’s before mine. After you’ve jumped, could I borrow yours?’

‘Sorry.’ The girl moved her horse away.

Carrie didn’t like to ask anyone else. They all seemed to know each other and were chattering without listening, telling tall stories about what their horses had won or were going to win. All the horses were very grand.

She stood alone by the side of the ring, John perfectly relaxed, except for trying to get his head down to eat grass. Grass, at a time like this! When Carrie saw some of the riders looking at him and sniggering, she looked
behind her to show she thought they were laughing at something else.

Mr Mismo was behind her, wearing his best green felt cap low down, to look knowledgeable, his large bulk overlapping a shooting stick. ‘Doesn’t look so bad for a muck cart horse,’ he said.

Carrie bit her lip. She couldn’t take that kind of joke today.

‘Keep your pecker up, old chump.’

She gave him a sick smile. She had ordered her family to keep away from her, but she was glad to see Mr Mismo, jokes and all.

‘Now look, I’ll tell you what you do.’ He had lent her the entry money, so was bossier than ever. ‘You start him out slow, see. That brush is nothing. The gate’s tricky, and watch that corner. You ease him up, then two strides before your in-and-out, push him on…’

Carrie couldn’t listen. Her eyes were on the jumping ring, where the judge and stewards were at the last fence, the triple bar, with their measuring stick.

The ring steward put the hunting horn to his lips. The thin thrilling sound made all the horses lift their heads and prick their ears, even John who had never gone hunting. Or had he? Had he ever been to a show before? His past was a mystery. The gate opened, and the first horse trotted into the ring, a girl like an ape on a bay thoroughbred with the two white feet and a star. Carrie’s dream horse. Oh well, of course, it would win. Better not look. She had to look.

The bay thoroughbred put his ears back even while the ape girl put him into his circling canter. He stopped at the brush. She whacked. He hopped over with his head in the air. He got stickily half way round the jumps, and
refused three times at the high gate. The girl whacked him and rode out with a face of fury.

‘One down,’ Mr Mismo said, leaning on the rail of the ring and sucking his pipe as calmly as if he were at a cattle show. ‘Fifteen to go.’

Nobody did well. The jumps were big and spaced in a difficult way. Every horse made some mistake. There were no clear rounds. Carrie began to feel a little less sick. Perhaps …? She watched a boy on a big chestnut crash all the bricks out of the top of the wall, and a good-looking grey dump his girl in the middle of the in-and-out.

The steward blew the horn to show that she was disqualified for falling off, and the girl limped out after the grey, which had already headed for the gate.

Suddenly it was Carrie’s turn. ‘Number fifty-two - Caroline Fielding on Don John.’

‘Where’s your cap?’ The man at the gate called to her.

‘I lost it.’

‘Lend her one, someone. Come on, you’re wasting time.’

Someone handed her a cap. It was too big. Even as she cantered round in her approach circle, it came down over her eyes and she had to take a hand off the reins and push it back. Someone in the crowd said, ‘Coo, look at this one!’ John leaped easily over the brush fence. ‘Never knew mules could jump,’ someone else said, and there was laughter.

The laughter stopped as he took the high rustic fence, his straggly plaits and the familiar view of the back of his wide ears rising before Carrie like an antelope. There was a roaring in her ears that was the roar of wind and hooves, the roar of the crowd, the roar of glory. Jump
after jump came up, he hammered the turf, rose, soared, landed - he could not make a mistake!

We’re going to win, Carrie thought numbly. She clung. She wasn’t riding. She was hanging on, with her legs weak and her breath gasping.

Down the middle to the last fence, the triple bar, John took off confidently, standing far back. Carrie was left behind. Her hands flew up, she jerked him in the mouth, and he crashed through the rails as she fell off.

‘All right?’ Someone ran over to her. She pushed him away and got up blindly, the cap over her eyes. John was standing by her, eating grass.

‘You could have won.’ She pushed back the cap and put her face into his neck.

I don’t care, she thought he said.

The horn blew, quite merrily. Carrie walked out of the ring, not holding the reins. John followed her with all his plaits undone.

He could have won. I wasn’t good enough.

When she was half asleep, jumping into a dream, Penny-Come-Quick was at the window without being called. She knew the tread of his impatient feet on the still night air.

She went to the window. It was not Penny, arching his grey silk neck to the call of the stars. It was not a dream horse. It was John.

And she knew every line of him, every glance of his honest eye, the plain set of his big ears, the warmth of his breath in her hand, and she knew that he was all she wanted.

They galloped to the star, and a small crowd gathered round to hear about the show.

‘He could have won,’ Carrie said, ‘but I wasn’t good enough.’ It was easy to be honest up here.

‘Isn’t it always the way?’ said Marocco. In the days of Queen Elizabeth, he had been a famous dancing horse, whose tricks were so clever that the people of those days called it black magic. ‘Almost any horse could jump, if it wasn’t for the clumsy clots on top.’

‘All horses can jump five feet,’ said a fat Shetland who didn’t look as though he could jump five inches.

‘Why don’t they jump out of a paddock then?’ Carrie asked.

‘Because they are too stupid.’ Marocco winked. He was one of the cleverest horses on the star.

‘No,’ John said, ‘it’s because they know when they’re well off.’

The next day was Sunday. How live through it until Monday when the pet shop would be open?

Carrie had unpinned the teddy bear and taken out the sock and counted the money once more. A few notes, and the rest of it in silver and coppers. It came to two hundred and ninety-five pounds.

‘Will you lend me five pounds?’ she asked her mother.

‘I will.’ Mother was still very tired and weak. It hurt her to sit up, so she lay on her back in the sagging, uncomfortable bed and watched John and Oliver and Leonora and Henry and Lucy and Perpetua’s older son, Moses moving peacefully about the slope of the meadow. She and Em played draughts with bottle caps on a piece of chequered linoleum. Michael read stories to her. She was the only person who could properly understand a story when Michael read it.

He was reading her an old book called
Gamble Gold,
which he had found in the attic. He read:

‘Budge shake his ear and Gammly God took up his poston and thew his first piece of sat.. sate … slate. It truck the water and gave one long lap, then a contant run for little laps, and truck the possite bank, and then a wonfull thing happended, of it come back cross the water again on the redound. Bug braking furishly all the time until it landed to Gammly foot.’

‘Gamble,’ Carrie said. ‘Gamble Gold’

‘“Thirty-eight, said Gammly God…”’

Carrie went down to get the five pounds from the Toby jug on the mantelpiece.

She was so happy today that even hearing a horn and a ‘Yoo-hoo!’ could not spoil it. She greeted Valentina with a smile, but her aunt marched into the house, demanding, ‘Where’s your mother?’

‘Upstairs in bed. She’s not well.’

‘I knew it was too soon to leave the hospital.’

‘Not well enough to see anyone.’ Carrie tried to get between Valentina and the staircase, but she pushed past and went up into Mother’s room, stamping the knotted old boards with her hard heels.

Carrie followed. ‘Well, he did come,’ she was saying. ‘Your precious husband Jerome arrived at dawn - he would, so dramatic - and woke us up.’

‘Jerry?’ Mother couldn’t sit up, but her tired eyes sparkled and her mouth curved into a glad smile. ‘Where is he?’

‘Search me. He’d been to your old house and found the blackened ruin. He came to us, in a high old state, so I told him what I thought of him going off into the blue with no thought for his duty to his family. He told me to mind my own business - he’s just as rude as ever - and when I said, “I bet you have no idea where your precious family are,” he wasn’t going to admit it. He said, “Of course I have,” and banged out. He broke a pane of glass in the front door. That will cost—’

‘But he
doesn’t
know!’ Mother’s face had fallen from brightness.

‘Who doesn’t?’

Carrie and Michael jumped round, and then ran to the
door. Mother, who couldn’t sit up, sat up and held out her arms. Valentina looked as if she’d seen a ghost.

‘See, Val, I told you I knew.’ With Em clutching behind, and Carrie and Michael hanging on him like weights, their father came and knelt beside the bed. ‘What’s wrong?’

‘I broke my back,’ said Mother with a broad grin.

‘My God-how?’

‘Trying to save someone’s life,’ Carrie said.

‘And did you?’

‘Yes. It was mine.’ Michael pushed his face up under his arm. ‘Laddy Ace. What does that mean?’

His father was wearing a bright blue jersey with
Lady Alice
across the chest.

‘It’s the name of my new boat. Well -I haven’t got her yet, but the jersey is a start.’

‘Where’s the other boat?’

‘It sank.’

He wore a pair of red bell-bottom trousers and rope sandals. He had grown a thick black beard. He looked like a pirate.

When Valentina had stamped away, he laughed and told them he had guessed she would come to them, so he waited till she came out, then got a taxi and followed her car.

‘Oh, by the way.’ He scratched his black curly head. ‘Anyone got any money? The driver’s waiting.’

‘No, he’s not.’ Tom had met Valentina in the lane, heard the news and raced upstairs. ‘Aunt Val was so furious, she backed her car into the taxi and the driver got nasty, so to shut him up, she paid his fare.’

Carrie had not seen Lester since she had caught sight of him at the horse show, perched in a tree like a rook, but as she walked through the beechwood to the crossroads where the bus stopped, he came casually out from the tall grey trees and fell into step beside her.

‘Why aren’t you at school?’ she asked.

‘I’m fed up with the school lark, so I came to see if you were too.’

‘I’m going into town to buy that monkey.’ Carrie showed him the sock with the money knotted into the toe.

‘Your horse money?’

‘I don’t need it for that now.’

Lester nodded. He was as good as a dog for quick understanding.

From the bus station in town, they ran to the pet shop, ducking and swerving among the slow Monday morning people. The owner was sitting with his elbows on the counter, eating a plate of greasy bacon.

‘Where’s the monkey?’ Carrie’s eyes had flown at once to Joey’s cage.

‘What monkey?’ He behaved as if he had never seen Carrie before.

‘You know, the one I liked. The one you said cost three hundred pounds.’

‘I got three hundred and fifty pounds for him, so that
shows how much
you
know.’ His jaw worked on the bacon. There was grease round his pale mouth.

‘You mean, you sold him?’

‘I’m not in business for my health, you know.’

‘If you are, it’s a failure.’ Lester murmured, standing by the snake’s tank, trying to hypnotize it with his eye.

‘You mean— ’ Carrie couldn’t believe it. She had not thought of this - ‘you mean, you sold him to the organ grinder?’ Into her mind jumped a vision of Joey in a little red jacket, shivering on top of a painted hurdy gurdy, while jaded Monday people hurried past, paying no attention to his outstretched cap.

The vision pushed tears forward, but the man said stupidly, ‘What organ grinder? A lady came into this shop a few days ago, and nothing would satisfy her but she’d take that monkey with her, sitting up in the back of a big car like Lord Muck himself.’

‘I know his cousin, the Marquess of Mud— ’ Lester began, but Carrie said quickly, ‘Please tell me the lady’s name.’

‘Let’s see.’ The man pretended to look through a long sales list in a notebook, running his soft white finger down the page, though Carrie could see, reading upside down, that it was a laundry list. ‘Name of Horrobin,’ he said, ‘because she’s horribly rich, ha, ha.’

Instead of spoiling his digestion, the greasy bacon seemed to improve his mood. ‘Lives in that swanky block of flats in the Broadway. Fairview Court, they call it, because there’s no tennis court and no view.’

‘Could we go and see her?’

‘I doubt you two will get past the porter.’ The man looked them up and down, as if they were a joke too.

Mrs Horrobin lived in the penthouse flat on top of the
tall new block of flats known as Fairview Court. She was, as the man had said, horribly rich. Lester and Carrie, shown in by a butler on to a thick white carpet in their faded shorts and grubby gym shoes, found her on a satin sofa, wearing a long ruffled gown with ostrich feathers at neck and hem, and smoking gold-tipped cigarettes. The little monkey was in a cage in the corner of the luxurious room. He was wearing frilly knickers and a silly baby’s dress with blue ribbons.

‘My dear children, I’m so glad you came.’ Mrs Hor-robin wasn’t as horrible as they had feared. ‘No one has been near me since I bought that dreadful Louise.’

‘He’s not a girl. I call him Joey,’ Carrie said. ‘Why did you buy him?’

‘She was so
sweet’
Mrs Horrobin was one of those people who never bother to get the sex of an animal right. ‘And I thought she would go with my new linen suit. Just the same shade. But oh, what a stupid girl I was!’ She was at least fifty, and showed every day of it. ‘Yesterday, I was playing with her, and she bit me.’ She held up a finger with an enormous bandage on it. ‘I may die of blood poisoning any minute. Look out, she’s savage!’