CHAPTER FOUR
… though home is a name, a word, it is a strong one; stronger than magician ever spoke, or spirit answered to, in strongest conjuration.
Charles Dickens, The Life and Adventures of Martin Chuzzlewit
‘Oh, my love. It’s all right, you’re home now.
You’re safe. We’ll look after you both. It’s all right.
It’s all right,’ Betsy crooned softly, putting down her book and mug.
She stroked Sage’s hair, soothing her as she would a frightened young thoroughbred, and guided her to the large oak kitchen table which was laid for breakfast. An abundance of silver cutlery, crystal glasses and Wedgwood china with distinctive dark green ivy twisting around its edges was set out across a crisp, light blue linen cloth in Sage and Hal’s honour.
Betsy sat her down in a comfortable chair and called to Maggie, ‘Bacon butties all round, please, Maggie darling – and a big pot of tea would be wonderful. Now,’ she said, turning to a round-eyed Hal, who was looking anxiously at his mother but still clinging to Casper, ‘let me have a good look at this beautiful angel child. My, how you’ve grown, Hal.
You will be as tall as your Uncle Casper in no time! Are you going to be a jockey too?’
Betsy gently took Hal from Casper, tilting her head towards Sage in a silent gesture for her grandson to go and comfort his sister.
She was extremely worried by the transformation in the normally vivacious, energetic Sage.
It had been two long years since she had laid eyes on her granddaughter when she and Hal had come to visit for Christmas.
She was considerably changed since then.
Sage was dreadfully thin, the bones in her shoulders and back pronounced even through layers of clothes, and the purple bruising on her taut face made Betsy wince. Turning away from Sage to hide her shock, she forced herself to smile as she focused on the exhausted child.
‘Would you like a big glass of milk, my love?’ she cooed at Hal, who had naturally nuzzled into her shoulder. He nodded contentedly at his great-grandmother and played with the string of pearls that lay against her old jersey with his sturdy brown fingers.
Did he meet Isabel this morning? she mouthed to Sage, her eyes wide in mock horror as she pulled her mouth into an exaggerated grimace.
Sage could not help but laugh and nodded, rolling her own eyes at her grandmother in return but being sure to do so behind her brother’s back.
She was starting to feel slightly better.
‘What a morning, my little one! It will all get easier from here, you’re safe now you’re home – don’t you worry, my pet,’ Betsy continued to Hal, holding the child close and stroking his back comfortingly.
‘Although you do have to contend with your fierce great-grandfather, who is on the warpath this morning as his lads keep falling off his horses! We have had valuable thoroughbreds galloping about loose on the Heath all morning … Bumpa was very cross indeed.’
‘Where is Bumpa? Hasn’t third lot finished yet?’ Sage glanced at the clock; it was almost eleven.
‘Oh, I should think so … but I think he had the vet coming afterwards to scope some of this week’s runners.
Racing goes on all year now, darling – no rest for the wicked.
’ Betsy sighed deeply, and Sage thought that although her grandmother was as beautiful as ever, she looked tired; there were dark circles under her bright eyes that Sage had never seen before.
‘Your grandfather could do with a rest really,’ Betsy continued. ‘It’s absolutely relentless.’
You and he both, Sage thought to herself, putting a tanned hand on her grandmother’s arm and squeezing it affectionately. Life as a trainer’s wife never got any less exhausting, however successful the business was.
Maggie bustled over to the table with a pot of tea and a big plate piled high with bacon sandwiches, which were made with thick granary bread and had rivers of butter melting from their corners.
‘Eat up, my darlings,’ she coaxed in her soft Waterford lilt, stroking Hal’s sun-kissed mop of blonde hair.
Still tucked into Betsy’s shoulder, his small, light body enveloped in her arms, Hal turned his head towards Maggie. His huge sloe eyes watched as she put a sandwich on a plate next to him and he shyly smiled his thanks at her from underneath thick, long eyelashes.
Sage took a cup of tea from Maggie’s outstretched hand but shook her head at the proffered sandwich.
‘Ahh, sure you need feeding up, Miss Sage. Eat the sandwich. You need some looking after, and that starts with Madam Betsy’s hugs and Old Maggie’s comfort food.’
Seeing that she had been outmanoeuvred, Sage took a small bite.
The familiar flavour of Maggie’s delicious cooking immediately took her back to her teenage years.
Taking another, larger bite, she laughed as butter spilt down her chin and, knowing that she was at last back among her own people, she finally began to relax.
‘Maggie, you are torturing me!’ Casper complained, half-joking. ‘I’ve got to make weight tomorrow – ten stone. No bacon butties for me. Gammy, please may I take my coffee out to the yard? I need to speak to Bumpa.’
‘Yes, of course, darling. There’s a fresh pot on the Aga if you’d like a top-up – help yourself.
You had a great week, what was it, ten wins?
’ Betsy smiled indulgently at her grandson; she was very proud of his thriving career and she always followed his every race.
‘You look thin too though, my love … I hope you’re not starving yourself? ’
Casper hugged his grandmother briefly; he was always starving himself but he would not let a small thing like food get in the way of winning the championship title for the sixth consecutive year, not after everything he’d worked for.
‘Not too much, I promise. I am as healthy as a horse.’
‘That is a particularly inept saying – just go out to the yard and you’ll see all the patients being lovingly tended to by our team of extortionately expensive vets!
’ said Betsy through pursed lips, the age-old anxiety of enormous veterinary bills still taking their toll despite there now being money in the bank to cover the costs.
Vets came hand in hand with horses, especially in racing.
Horses were always getting injured. She watched Casper filling a big mug with coffee.
‘Tell your grandfather to come in for breakfast when he’s finished with Duncan, will you? ’
‘Yes, Gammy. I will.’
Betsy saw Sage looking longingly after Casper.
‘Darling, you can go too. Your grandfather would love to see you. Hal will look after Maggie and me – won’t you, treasure?’ Hal nodded solemnly, gazing up adoringly at Betsy.
‘Thank you, Gammy,’ Sage mumbled gratefully, the relief of knowing that they were safe almost taking her breath away.
To finally be home with Hal was like a dream.
She had longed for this moment so desperately over the past two years, had pictured this scene over and over.
It was everything she had pined for. Sitting in the comfort of the warm, familiar kitchen, cradling the mug with her name painted on that she had used as a child, Beetle’s loving whippet head resting on her leg while Betsy and Maggie provided stolid reassurance.
It was finally real. The only missing part of the puzzle was her grandfather.
Swallowing the rest of her sandwich and washing it down with a huge gulp of hot tea, she hurried after her brother in a flurry of long legs and wild, dark hair.
‘Mumma and Uncle Casper look the same, Gammy,’ Hal said in surprise.
Betsy laughed. ‘Yes, they do, my darling heart … yes, they do.’
Dennis Seymour was in his office, puffing on his old pipe and talking to Duncan Morant, the senior vet.
It was a large room in the centre of the main yard and was known by his stable lads as ‘the lair’.
Dennis had trained on the flat for forty-five years, having taken over from his father when he was only twenty; his office had never been redecorated and thus it looked like a relic of a past century.
Worn, polished floorboards were covered with an ancient Persian rug.
A fire crackled merrily from the open fireplace and an ornate Georgian desk sat in the centre of the room with a dark green velvet wingback chair behind it.
This was Dennis’s chair; no one else ever sat in it.
There were three hard seats on the other side of the desk for visitors, whom he preferred not to linger.
The walls were lined with bookshelves filled with hardbacked classics, leather-bound volumes of poetry and the works of playwrights from Shakespeare to Bernard Shaw, sales catalogues and books on racing, fishing and natural history.
Various trophies and sculptures nestled between the books along with whisky decanters, crystal glasses and silver-framed photographs, while pouches of tobacco and pipe paraphernalia jostled for space amidst worm drenches and broken spurs.
An old vintage rifle was displayed on the wall, and in the corner stood numerous lengths of salmon rods.
Two large bay windows looked out into the yard, meaning Dennis could always see what was happening from his desk.
Sage opened the carved wooden gate that led from the walled garden of North Place into the stable yard and saw Casper halfway along the gravel path that led up to their grandfather’s office.
He was being watched by several sets of well-bred, curious thoroughbred eyes, which now turned their attention to her over freshly painted dark blue half doors.