Chapter Thirty-Eight #2
‘You don’t seem like it’s your first cigarette,’ Brigid said, amused. She put her back to the tree trunk also, leaning into it and drawing her white cardigan tight around her.
‘Oh, the boys are always making me smoke, ever since I was a kid,’ Kick said.
‘They reckon it’s important that I know how to do it, in case a young man I like ever offers me.
’ She breathed out again. ‘They said I would be ridiculous if I began to cough and splutter and that I should learn to do it properly. Shall we keep walking?’
‘Where are we going, anyway?’ Brigid said. ‘There’s nothing in the stables. No horses. Yet. My sister wanted to fill every stall, but Chips has said to wait. He hasn’t decided if they will hunt here, or merely shoot.’
‘It will make a difference to the horses they buy,’ Fritzi said thoughtfully. ‘An interesting choice.’
‘Is it?’ Brigid said vaguely. ‘Let’s go there anyway.’ She shivered. ‘See how wet my shoes are.’ She held up a foot. Even in the dim light, her white canvas shoes were dark with mud and rain.
‘You must take my jacket,’ Fritzi said.
‘I suppose I must,’ she agreed.
He draped the jacket around her, then said in friendly tones, ‘But what of you, Kick?’ It was the first time he’d called her that.
‘I’m alright,’ Kick said.
They walked to the stables, which weren’t empty after all.
A heavy carthorse stood patiently in the first stall, in a deep bed of straw.
He ambled up to the half door to look at them.
‘What a beauty you are,’ Brigid said, putting her arms around the horse’s neck.
‘I love carthorses. I think they are my very favourite. Don’t you, Fritzi? ’
‘It depends,’ he said cautiously. ‘For pulling a cart, yes.’ Brigid made a face. ‘But for hunting, no, I prefer a hunter. For racing, a racehorse. For showjumping—’
‘Yes, we get it,’ Brigid said impatiently.
‘A showjumper. For dressage, a dressage horse. How little imagination you have! But for a friend – give me a carthorse every time. One just like this fellow, who is the dearest chap I ever met.’ The horse was nosing gently at her.
‘See, he’s looking for something. An apple.
A carrot. If only I had a handful of sugar.
If I’d known he was here, I would have brought some. ’
‘I will bring some to him tomorrow,’ Fritzi promised solemnly.
‘And that will have to do. I say, I wonder who’s room that is?’ She gestured to a light in a room above the stalls at the far end of the yard. There was no window covering so that it shone, hard and yellow in the dusk.
‘Like a ship’s lantern,’ said Fritzi.
‘I didn’t think there was anyone here. Come on, we’d better get back.
They will be looking for us. I know a quicker way.
’ They walked back faster, talking less, coming around the other side of the house and through the gardens at the back.
The dressing gong went just as they passed the pool house.
‘Go in that door, Fritzi, and you can go straight up the stairs to your room. We’ll be quicker through the side door. ’
‘You like him a little more?’ Kick asked when they were alone.
‘He is more human, less golden. That’s all.’
‘And perhaps that will be enough.’
‘Enough for what? Don’t be cryptic, Kick.’ When Kick didn’t answer, ‘He seems quite afraid, doesn’t he?’ she continued. ‘Poor chap.’
‘Sometimes that’s all it takes,’ Kick said wisely.
‘What is?’
‘Sympathy. Pity. A little seam of lead where there has been only gold.’
‘Honestly, you are absurd. Now come, we will be late.’
‘You go. I’m going to stay here a few minutes longer. I’m quicker to dress than you are anyway.’
Alone, Kick found a low stone wall and sat on it. The moss was wet and quickly soaked through the cotton of her dress so that, where she had been cold, now she was shivering. But she couldn’t make herself go in just yet. Not when there was so much to think about.
She yawned. More than anything, she would have liked to go to the kitchen, eat a bowl of soup with bread, and tumble into bed.
Not to face the cross-currents of insult and inquiry that the dining room would bring.
But there was no way to escape it. Even if she could have given her excuses to her host, her mother would never have allowed it.
She yawned again, and stretched her arms up high into the air.
The sound of water was everywhere; dripping, trickling, rushing.
It animated her. Made her feel as though she too could bend and swerve and flow the way it did, gathering itself, dispersing, gathering again, connected with everything around it, drawing strength and giving strength.
That, she thought, was how she would like to live her life.
With or without Billy. And, after all, better to know now rather than later.
Could Brigid be right? she wondered. Was it the very ways that she was different that made him like her, if he did like her?
And if so, how far might that stretch? Far enough to cover her Americanism?
Her father’s film and talk of failure? Her Catholicism?
It would want to be a very keen interest in her differences to take in all that, she thought. Very keen indeed.
Maybe he’ll ring tomorrow, she had thought when he’d left the night of the film.
Ring up and say something casual about ‘that frightful row last night’ and then it would all be over.
But he hadn’t. She knew from Debo, who wrote to her, that he was now staying at Blenheim, and that Irene was there.
Please do not tell me anymore, she wrote back, for if it’s not to be then I want to forget about it as fast as I can …
But she didn’t forget. Couldn’t.
How strange it was, she thought then, when you considered how alike people were – same arms and legs and eyes that were blue or brown or green but really all the same sorts of sizes and shapes – how, amongst them all, there was one whose voice you heard more clearly, one whose eyes met yours and seemed to leave something inside you.
And how that glance told you more than words could, in a way that you heard more clearly than words.
She squared her shoulders. The clean night air whispered of love but she would not allow herself to listen. She couldn’t because if she did, she would hear something, even though there might be nothing there for her to hear.