Miss Chance

‘He says he still loves her. Says that he – what is it? – that he just overdid it.’

‘One who loved not wisely but too well, exactly.’

Jim, slouching in his chair at the back, long hair falling over his face in a manner that reminded Mark of his sister, said: ‘Is Desdemona really faithful, Mr Brown?’

‘Everybody says so. The Moor included, at the end.’

‘But I mean, in that scene with Cassio, she’s obviously flirting with him, isn’t she? I mean she really likes him. She says so.’

‘Is liking someone infidelity, then?’

Jim seemed to have been looking hard at the back of Jane’s neck as he spoke. So perhaps there was a hidden agenda; after all, there generally is. Jim was the official propounder of the view that Shakespeare was overrated; well, every half-decent group needs one of those. Mark was not sitting at the desk provided, nor was he standing up and walking about. He was sitting among his audience, on one of the spare desks, foot on one of the spare chairs. His right ankle was on his left knee, revealing a great deal of dusty black boot. Clint indeed.

‘Do you get the impression that Desdemona’s a really sexy lady, Mr Brown?’ This was Ralph, the official Lawrentian; every half-decent group, etc. He had a strange helmet of black curls and a wonderfully dramatic pair of sideburns, no doubt the envy of the rest of the males. Inevitably there were a few giggles at this piece of daring, but Ralph intended a serious question beneath the showing-off, and Mark took it as such.

‘You clearly do, Ralph. Tell us more.’

‘Well, Cassio obviously fancies her. And Othello is crazy about her. Nice double entendre, Mr Brown.’ Mark laughed hearing one of his own tricks of speech amiably turned back on him.

‘Maybe Iago too,’ Jane murmured, from somewhere near his right boot.

‘Very intriguing point,’ Mark said.

‘So maybe Othello has some kind of real ground for his suspicion, Mr Brown.’ This again from Jim.

‘Is being an attractive person a form of betrayal, then?’ Mark asked.

‘It is if you are trying to cause trouble,’ said Susan, who signed her essays ‘Soo’. ‘I mean, if she wanted to upset Othello by flirting with Cassio, then she was betraying him, wasn’t she?’

A boy, dressed in pointedly conservative style, Roger or Richard somebody, said: ‘But did Shakespeare really intend us to worry about all this, Mr Brown?’

‘Ah, the intention problem,’ said Mark. On his knee, as always, there was a clipboard, that might have held notes on Othello but in fact held the names and notes for the recognition of the members of this new class, ‘It’s a very important point, er, Roger, and one we’ll come back to next week, when we do an unseen poem. But in the meantime, hold your horses.’ Susan or Soo murmured something to Jane beside her, and both giggled softly. Perhaps something to do with horses and cowboy boots. ‘In the meantime, I want you all to think about sex.’ This naturally got a laugh. A smooth and serious boy drew breath for a question. ‘And if you’re asking if sex is relevant for the exam, Sandeep, then I’m disappointed in you.’

Sandeep was well able to deal with a sally of this kind, as Mark had observed in previous classes, ‘I mean only to ask, Mr Brown, if the examiners will be shocked by such matters.’

‘As I’ve told you before, Sandeep, examination technique is something that will be discussed fully and at length in the last week of term. Worry about it then. For the next few weeks, I want you to worry about the play.’ A bell rang sharply. ‘There, doesn’t time fly when you’re talking about sex? Some thoughts, please, on paper. We’ve been talking about betrayal: right, tell me more. Take any one character in the play, and follow the theme of betrayal. Who, if anyone, does he or she betray? By whom, if anyone, is he or she betrayed? Let yourselves go. It’s a big subject, after all.’

By rights, Mark should have written up his notes for the day before he left. That had always been his usual practice. But she was waiting for him. And besides, he wanted to catch the light. Soon the hour would go back and evenings would become a wilderness of gloom. Rushing from school to the stable-yard, he was returning to his youth with a vengeance. He scribbled a few things to remember, notes for his notes, on his clipboard, and then hurried to collect his bag, and its usual ton of books. For he had to drive to Radlett.

For he had to drive to Radlett to work his horse. The yellow dogs leapt and curvetted at his entrance: ‘Don’t bark,’ Mark told them, ‘I live here now.’

Jan lived in a small lair with the tack-room behind her, where she smoked cigarettes and talked energetically to the telephone. She was doing exactly that when Mark arrived. ‘Nigh sauce,’ she was saying. She had the telephone tucked under her chin like a violin and was cleaning tack with both hands. She waved to him with a sponge full of saddle soap. ‘Bloody great big thing, nice bit of bone, up to your weight, easy. Nice paces, nice manners, and he’ll carry you all day. No world beater but he’s a nigh sauce.’ She pointed at the kettle and then at Mark and herself. So Mark obediently made tea, though he was itching to get at the line of boxes. Jan, still selling hard, eventually put the phone down. Mark rewarded her with sugared tea.

‘Well,’ she said. ‘She’s ’ere.’

‘Settled in all right?’

‘No trouble. Kath brought her over this morning, nigh sauce, happy with everything, bless her.’ Jan had a straggle of dark curls, jumble-sale clothes and more than a touch of gypsy. She ran the livery yard and bought and sold horses. Kath laughed in his face when he had told her that he was planning to keep the mare at Jan’s, and told him that Jan would ‘have you for breakfast’. ‘I turned her out after lunch ’cause she got restless in her box, and she got on fine, seemed to take a shine to Ed, bless him.’

‘No dramas, then?’

‘Course not.’ And she wouldn’t tell me if there were. All yard managers treat owners like amiable idiots, which in a sense is fair enough. They also treat all horses as if they were their own. ‘Brought, ’em all in just before five and fed ’em.’

‘She ate up?’

‘Every scrap. Nothing worried her. She’s a nigh sauce and she’ll not give you no grief.’ It is axiomatic that all yard managers know more about the horses in their care than do their owners. Jan explained about livery bills and their payment, the times when the yard could be visited, where the light switches were, the system for leaving messages and where the keys were hidden when she was away buying and selling or, as she occasionally did, sleeping or eating in her own home. All of which was essential information, but Mark wanted to see his horse. My horse.

Jan showed him the tack-room, and the place she had cleared for him, with a rack for saddle and for bridle and room on the floor for his trunk. She even helped him shift this item into its place, which was beyond the call of duty. ‘Right then. You’d better ride your rauce.’

‘I’ll just lunge her today.’

‘You get on her. She won’t give no trouble.’

‘We’ll see.’ A stock dismissive of his mother’s. Mark opened the trunk and removed the things he wanted. Including his green cord cap. He put it on his head. Horseman. He walked along to the boxes: a dozen heads, peering over their half-doors around three sides of a square. A strange joy seized him: the essential contradiction of it all. The mixture of cosy domesticity with deep wildness. That was the contradiction in this pleasant evening sight: the contradiction in everything to do with humans and horses. You seek wildness without wildness; you seek to tame without taming. And that last, that was precisely the problem that lay before him with this daft, lovely and troubled animal.

A head, bay, with a white star. He entered her box, talking soft greeting nonsense. A horse likes to hear the mood, read the intentions of the animals all around, equine, human, carnivorous. A horse always likes to know where every one is, and hates above all to be sneaked up on. The constant talking of horsey gibberish is a request: may I have permission to enter the border-country?

Mark slipped over her head a leather head collar that bore on a brass plate the name Trev. A gift, ancient but unforgotten, from Mel. It fitted well enough, on the topmost hole. He attached a lead rope by its clip and asked her to walk from her box. He tied her to a ring set in the wall, or rather, a loop of baling twine threaded through the ring. His fingers tied the quick release knot.

The mare accepted all this without fuss, even with kindness. The bouncing assertiveness of her madcap canter round Kath’s field, the terrifying vertical stand – these seemed matters connected with another horse, another being entirely.

Mark picked out her hooves with a hoof-pick and she lifted each foot in turn with easy courtesy. Then he brushed her vigorously with a body-brush, knocking the dust and scurf from the brush with a metal currycomb. Each movement took him deeper into the past. Trevor’s obstreperous behaviour before a show: he knew, all right, always read the excitement in the air. But the mare was kind and accepting, though she fidgeted uncomfortably when he brushed too hard. ‘Sorry, darling,’ he said softly. He had never called anybody darling. Nor angel, for that matter.

He removed her head collar, certain she would not take advantage of him. Put on Trev’s lungeing cavesson. Not to bother with surcingle and side-reins and stuff. Just attach the lunge-line to the ring on the nose, and grab the lunge-whip.

A crisis was approaching. The trick was to pretend that it wasn’t, because horses read human body language better than humans read horses’. Annoyingly, perhaps disastrously, he felt his pulse quicken. Pretend it wasn’t. ‘Come, miss.’

She saw the school ahead of her and stopped dead, as if she had walked into a wall. She had never seen it before. It was not the school where Kath had worked her, where Kath had tried to reform her with a series of beatings, where even Mark had hit her three times. But it was still a school, and she knew it. It was a Bad Place.

She stood a full inch taller, looking at the sand, every part of her expressing her not-quite terror. Damn it, Mark thought, I forgot my gloves. And hard hat, but I won’t need that, will I?

‘Come on, miss. Walk forward.’ Give her a bloody good belt and she’ll walk forward all right. A statue, staring forward at the bland sand, the abode of dragons. Mark let her stare for a while, mane-nibbling with his fingers, talking soft horsey gibberish. All right then. We’ll walk forward now, shall we?

Three paces, and another dead halt. Mark tried again, patting, talking. Plenty of time. Hope to God no one sees, they’ll think I’m the softest bloody touch that ever sat on a horse. Give us your lunge-whip, old son, and we’ll get her through.

‘Walk on, please, miss.’ And suddenly she was through the gate, and wild with excitement or terror at her own daring, and was dancing, threatening the safety of his toes. ‘Ah, the madcap,’ he said, much made up by this success, oblivious of the flying hooves, ‘I remember the madcap. Run about, then.’

And he was lungeing his horse in a circle, bracing himself against the wildness of her flight, taking a half-turn of line behind his back to stop the horse from water-skiing him across the school, and she ran her craziness to its end and at last started to work, and Mark kept her to it with little gestures of the long lunge-whip, never touching her.

And then all over again on the other rein.

Make much of horse. His old riding teacher’s instruction at the conclusion of any demanding piece of work. And Mark made much.

Back in her box, she was fêted with extra strong mints, and the smell of the minty breath of his horse was to breathe in the good past. He had reached out and touched her; his touch had been accepted. He stood for a while outside the box, leaning on the half-door, she looking out, occasionally touching him with her nose. Must leave. Bloody D. H. Lawrence to read. Write up those notes. Listen to the answerphone. Please God, not another surprise visit from Morgan. Perdition, he thought, catch my soul.

15

Rather rum. One of The Mate’s favourite expressions, and it seemed to cover every aspect of the situation. It had, indeed, been one of the rummer weekends of a life not untouched by rumness. And one of the rummest people he had ever met. By far the rummest he had ever kissed. What to make of it all?

It was hardly a personal triumph, for all the kissing, the being kissed back and the promise that he would kiss again. That strange night. Had he passed the test she had set him? Or had he abjectly failed? Did she know herself?

It had been a time stolen from the common run of things, that much at least was certain. But it had not been a lover’s idyll, a dalliance of hearts and bodies, of tempers and reconciliations and promises and plans. She had wept, yes, but only for the pier that stretched out into the sea. Rum.

It was thirty-six hours of magic, but not magic as the term is commonly understood. It was magic of the subtle, ambivalent and sinister kind that you find in Celtic myth. ‘Do you think you could learn to mildly dislike me?’ she asked. ‘It would make things so much easier, don’t you see?’

‘Perhaps. Could you learn to mildly dislike me?’

‘Oh, but I already do.’

‘That’s all right then.’

‘You’re so pleasant, you see.’

‘Only nineteen hours before I kiss you again.’

‘I’m looking forward to that.’

Well, Mark thought, walking up the stairs to the flat. Now a little less than twelve hours before he kissed her once again.

He opened the door and called out Callum’s name, but there was no reply. Then he saw a note pinned to the table by a knife, a regular means of communication: I’m at Chris’s. Could you come round right away? Whatever the time of night? It’s not life and death, but it’s important. All right?

Horror. For a moment he wondered if he wasn’t going to faint. Christine. Or perhaps throw up. He had not been in the mood for reality. What had she done? What did she know? Not that there was anything to know. Or not really.

He sat down for a good while longer, being appalled. But after a while, even being appalled runs out of steam. There was nothing for it but to go and face it. The reproaches: though what had he done for which he should be reproached?

Ten minutes later, he was knocking at Chris’s door. Callum answered: ‘Oh, thank God.’

‘What’s happened?’

‘Go to the kitchen. I’ll tell her you’re here. She’s been listening out. Then I’ll explain.’

Callum’s face, his voice were neutral, carefully so. Mark went and stood about feebly in the kitchen. He wondered if there was beer in the fridge: she might have bought one for him. But it would not do, to look for it.

Callum came in. ‘It’s all right,’ he said. He sat down at the kitchen table. Mark sat also. ‘Thing is, she can’t speak. Physiological thing. I mean, it’s not her fault, she’s not putting it on. Had the doctor round. It’s some kind of locking-up. It’ll unlock in a day or so. Happens sometimes to people in shock.’

‘What’s happened, Cal?’ Mark’s own voice was not at its clearest.

‘She saw you going to the station.’

‘How?’ Perhaps that syllable was a complete giveaway, but if so, Callum gave no sign of understanding it. Anyway, giving what away?

‘We’ve been having quite a chat. She writes things down. New term resolution, remember? She was going to work every Saturday.’

‘Oh Christ, at the Cottle Reading Room.’ Which was near the railway station.

‘She was having a coffee break.’

‘Oh God, at the Voyagers.’ Which overlooked the station entrance.

‘And she saw you and –’

‘But look, Christ, what is she on about? All I did was catch a train, and anyway nothing happened –’

‘She saw you with a girl. And she knew at once that you were in love with her. By the way you were walking.’

‘Jesus, that’s ridiculous, I mean I was –’

‘Tell me about it sometime. But maybe you should see Chris now. And tell her what you want to tell her.’

‘Oh God.’

Mark went and knocked at her door. He then realised that waiting for a reply was foolish, so he called, ‘It’s me’ through the wood and then walked in. She lay on her mattress on the floor, a double mattress purchased primarily as an arena for gymnastics. Though that was not its function now. She lay under the covers, face on the pillow half-hidden by a straggle of fair hair. Body present, mind apparently absent, kidnapped by aliens. ‘Pretty child,’ his mother had said.

Chris sat up in bed, shifting the covers back. Not naked. Quite well wrapped up, in fact. Mark had been intending to embrace her, to kiss her face, but he did not do so, for reasons that eluded him. With odd, dormouse-like movements she rootled about for a notebook and pencil and wrote a word for him. Sorry.

‘Oh, look, Chris, Jesus, it’s me that’s sorry, all my fault, I didn’t mean to cause you any distress, it was hopeless of me, I’m such a bloody fool, but look, honestly, nothing happened, you’ve got it all wrong.’

I love you.

Oh God. ‘I’d never do anything to hurt you, it was stupid of me, inconsiderate, I just went to the seaside, you see –’

Are you sleeping with her yet?

‘Christ, no, not a thought of it, not an option, I mean we did spend the night there, but, you know, no hanky-panky. I mean nothing at all, no kissing and cuddling or anything. Just talking. I mean, she’s weird. I don’t even like her very much.’

You’re in love with her.

Mark explained at considerable length and with some warmth that this was not the case, and never could be. She wrote down one of his own favourite rejoinders, one he had used to tease her, laughing, a thousand times and more. She wrote, the lady doth protest too much. ‘Oh Christ, think what you like, Chris, but I know what I feel, and I know what happened, and I tell you, nothing’s changed so far as you and I are concerned. Not if that’s what you want.’ Mark had been ready to sweep her up into his arms at the conclusion of this avowal, but somehow it didn’t seem the moment. She was writing on her notebook once again. This time only very brief and rather brusque movements of the pencil. She then lay her head on the pillow to indicate that the interview was over. Mark rambled on disconnectedly for a while, but she did not respond. He tried laying his hand on her shoulder, even leant over to kiss her face, but she was hard, rigid, locked solid. So after a while of sitting in silence, in case she should wish to speak or at least to make some sign, he got up and left. He said as he went: ‘I’ll be back tomorrow. All right?’

In the notebook she had inserted, after the second word of the second line she had written for him, two further characters. LD.

‘You all right, Mark?’

Mark was standing in the kitchen with his hands clasped around the back of his neck. ‘Sure.’

Конец ознакомительного фрагмента.

Текст предоставлен ООО «ЛитРес».

Прочитайте эту книгу целиком, купив полную легальную версию на ЛитРес.

Безопасно оплатить книгу можно банковской картой Visa, MasterCard, Maestro, со счета мобильного телефона, с платежного терминала, в салоне МТС или Связной, через PayPal, WebMoney, Яндекс.Деньги, QIWI Кошелек, бонусными картами или другим удобным Вам способом.