Annoyingly, he seemed determined to baby her today, too. Twice he jumped off, and said he wanted to check her horse's girth, thrusting her leg and the saddle flap out of the way as he heaved the buckles up a further notch. But it wasn't done with any flirting, or unnecessary touching of her thigh, and when Sabine had rather recklessly tried to wipe the mud from his white hunting stock, he had laughed, and wheeled his horse away, in order to do it himself.
"You worry about yourself, now," he said, tapping inexplicably at his head. "There's a lot worse that can happen out here than a bit of mud on your gear."
They had been out almost three hours when Sabine realized she hadn't actually seen a fox. She was ashamed to think that she had completely forgotten that chasing and killing one had been the aim of the day, but then she was no longer anywhere near the hounds, and her horse, along with three or four others, had somehow taken a different turning from the main body of the hunt, and were all walking in a sedate manner, "giving the horses a breather," as the ruddy-faced farmer at the front put it.
Sabine had lost Thom in a forest, when he had dismounted to help one of the horses, who had gotten a leg caught in barbed wire. There were four people standing around the animal, one of whom had produced wirecutters from his jacket, and Thom had held the stricken horse's head while the delicate operation to free him took place. "You go on," he had called to Sabine. "We may be a while here. I'll catch you up." He had apparently stopped worrying about her, a misplaced emotion, as it turned out, as some ten minutes later, the gray had skidded on a timber table and she had pitched over his head.
"Are you all right?" said one of the younger men, who had immediately jumped down to help her, while someone else caught the horse.
"I'm fine," she said, heaving herself up from the squelching earth. "Just a bit muddy."
That was an understatement, she realized, a little sorrowfully. Her creamy white jodhpurs were now brown over one leg, like a cut-price jester, while Joy's beautiful navy jacket was plastered in mud.
The man pulled a rather grubby handkerchief from his pocket and handed it to her. "For your face," he said. "There's a fair bit around your eye."
When she raised it to the wrong eye, he initially corrected her, then, taking it from her, wiped at her face himself. It was at this point that she noticed him: brown eyes, pale skin, a broad smile. Young.
"You're not from here, then," he said, helping her over to the gray horse, who had been checked over and found sound. "Not with that accent. London, is it?"
"Yup." It sounded too bald. "I'm staying with my grandparents."
"Where?"
"Kilcarrion. It's in a village called Ballymalnaugh."
"I know it. Who are your folks?"
"They're called Ballantyne."
He reached down for her boot, offering to give her a leg up.
"I know them. The old couple. English. Didn't realize they had any rellies."
She looked down at him, grinning.
"Oh. And you know everyone's business, do you?"
He grinned back. He was quite good-looking, really.
"Listen, London girl. Round here, everybody knows everyone's business."
He had stuck with her after that, chatting, and now, as they walked in their little group down the wet lanes, he was still chatting. He lived in a village about four miles away from hers, was hoping to go to Durham University in England, like his brother, and spent his spare time "mucking around" on his parents' farm. He called himself Robert, everyone else called him Bobby, and Sabine didn't think she had ever met anyone who talked quite as much.
"So, d'you go out much, Sabine?"
"What, in London?"
"No, here. I'm sure a pretty girl like yourself has no shortage of offers in London."
Sabine narrowed her eyes at him. Bobby had a way of saying charming things that hinted just gently that he was also taking the mickey. Sabine was very conscious of the possibility that people were taking the mickey.
"I go out a bit," she said.
"The pub and stuff?" he said, pulling his horse back slightly so that they were alongside each other.
"Stuff like that," she said, a little disingenuously. Sabine had not been to a pub since she had gotten there. Her grandparents were not really pub people, and Thom had never shown the slightest inclination to invite her.
"You want to go out sometime?"
Sabine flushed. He was asking her out! She stared at her hands, berating herself for the flood of color to her face. God, she could be uncool sometimes.
"If you want," she muttered.
"Well you don't have to," he said. "I won't twist your arm or anything." He was still grinning.
Sabine smiled back. She could make up her mind how she felt about him when she got home. And how on earth she would explain any potential date to her grandparents.
"Okay, then."
"Good. Now, hold on tight, I think we're going to take the shortcut back to the others."
Before she had had a chance to reflect upon Bobby McAndrew, Sabine found herself galloping across a field, close on the heels of his bay horse. It was just beginning to get dark, and as they raced toward the far end, Sabine realized she had begun to ache all over and could no longer feel her toes. Her eyes focused on the mud-spattered hindquarters in front of her, she felt a sudden longing for a long, hot bath, and hoped that they weren't too far from home. She had no idea where she was going to meet Thom, and if she couldn't find him, she didn't know where she was meant to meet her grandmother. She hadn't really been listening this morning.
She was so busy worrying about finding her way back that it took some seconds before she realized Bobby was shouting at her. She strained her ears against the whistling wind to hear what he was saying, shaking her head, so that in the end he pulled back a little, and yelled toward her face.
"There's a Wexford bank ahead," he said. "It's a bit of a tough one. Dig your heels down deep and grab hold of his mane."
Sabine, her eyes widening, glanced at where he was pointing. Ahead of them, she could make out two horses, who seemed to be taking near-vertical leaps onto the top of the bank, and then, in a scrabble of mud and hooves, flying off again. Sabine's heart stopped.
"I can't do that!" she shouted.
"You'll have to," yelled Bobby. "The only other way out of this field is back the way we came." And she saw him gathering up his reins, ready to make the leap himself.
Sabine decided that a long trek by herself had to be preferable to a broken neck, and made to pull up. But the gray was having none of it. Determined to remain with his fellows, his neck thrust forward, as inflexible as a ramrod, and he plowed toward the bank, heedless to her tuggings and pleadings. Sabine had no time to think; either she baled out now, onto the wet turf beneath her, or she trusted this animal, and just did her best to stay on. The bank, which loomed before her, looked impossibly big, the shadowy ditch before it as dark as a grave. She saw Bobby's horse check himself, and then thrust forward, making the leap, skidding a little at the top, and, with his accompanying shout, disappear from sight.
And then she let go of the reins, thrust her feet deep in the stirrups, and shut her eyes. I'm going to die, she thought. I love you, Mum, and then suddenly the horse swept forward and up under her, so that she whiplashed backward, lurching backward on the saddle and, as she briefly opened her eyes, they were on top, and his neck was bowed, checking the correct position for his feet, and then, as she closed her eyes and squealed, they were leaping down again, an impossible distance, so that she collapsed on his neck as he landed, her feet free from her stirrups and her arms clasped chaotically around his neck.
"Here. Here," shouted Bobby, pushing one of the loose reins into her hand and laughing. "You made it. Good for you."
Sabine, pushing herself upright, found her mouth bubbling wide with laughter, and her hands patting the little horse beneath her, unable to believe what they had just achieved. "Good boy, good boy," she sang joyously. "You clever, cleve
r boy." Her blood infused with adrenaline, she wanted to shout and exclaim, and jump the bloody thing again.
"I didn't think I'd make that one myself. You did grand just staying on."
She turned to Bobby, her face illuminated by a wide, unmasked smile. And spoke the words whose significance would be entirely lost on a farmer's son from four miles away.
"I didn't take the gate!"
It didn't feel somehow fair that someone who had just jumped the biggest bank in the whole entire world should have to spend quite this much time washing mud from horses' legs, cleaning tack, and polishing one's boots, even when one was really, really aching and one's bum bones felt like they had been hit by an iron bar and one was so cold that one's fingers kept being all weak and bendy and useless like raw chipolatas, but Joy was quite clear: "Your horse comes first. He's served you very well today, so the least you can do is give him a jolly good rubdown."
By the time Sabine had gotten every last bit of mud off--and Irish mud seemed to have this infuriating ability to get everywhere--she had almost come down from her posthunting high, and was beginning to feel pretty chilled and stiff and that it was she who was in need of a rubdown and a hot bran and molasses mash (it had in fact smelled so good that she had tried it herself--disappointingly, it tasted like carpet underlay). Unfortunately, it was at that point that Joy had come down the stairs to the boot room and informed Sabine, with the closest thing to an apology that she had ever seen, that because of some problem with the hot water, there wasn't going to be enough for her to have a bath.
"You are joking," Sabine had said, feeling suddenly as if she were going to cry. The thought of simply peeling out of these damp clothes in that damp room and putting on some other chilly ensemble was too depressing.
"No, I'm not." She paused. "But I have had a word with Annie and she says they've no guests tonight and you're more than welcome to have a bath over there."
Joy half smiled at her as she went to close the door.
"You didn't really think I'd let you do a day's hunting without a hot bath at the end of it, did you? It's practically the best bit."
Sabine had grinned back, wondering privately at her grandmother's weird sense of humor, and then run upstairs to get her towel and shampoo. A bath at Annie's! Limitless hot water! Soap that didn't have deep gray fissures running through it! No freezing, shivering sprint from the bathroom to her bedroom! Sabine found herself practically running across the road, the proximity of such warmth and luxury infecting her with a renewed energy.
It was clear, however, when she opened the door, that there was something of a chill in the air at Annie's house. She had burst into the living room, desperate to tell Annie about her day, and Bobby asking her out, and thank her for the bathing experience ahead, but as she had caught sight of them both, staring away from each other from the opposite ends of the room, the words had frozen on her lips.
"I--I--hi, there," she had said, halting in the doorway. It was unnaturally quiet in there; even the ever-present television was turned off. It was the wrong kind of silence: weighty, burdened by words that had come before.
"Sabine," said Patrick, straightening up slightly.
Annie, the neck of her oversized jumper pulled up under her chin, just looked at her as if she hadn't seen her. Sabine stood for a moment, shifting her weight from leg to leg, unsure whether she should back out.
"I--is it still all right if I have my bath?"
Patrick had nodded, but Annie had slowly lifted her head, uncomprehending.
"Bath?"
"I thought--my grandmother--"
"You just said she could have a bath. You told Joy on the phone. I heard you." Patrick sounded exasperated, as if this were merely the latest in a long line of such exchanges.
Annie shrugged.
"Sure you can have a bath. Anytime."
Sabine stared at her, anxiously.
"Now? My grandmother said it would be okay to come now."
There was a short pause.
Patrick, unable to watch Sabine's indecision, couldn't bear it.
"Of course it's fine, Sabine. We've been waiting for you. You go on up now, and give us a shout if you need anything. Take as long as you want."
Sabine began to walk slowly through the living room toward the stairs.
"I've brought my own towels," she said softly, as if that might help lift Annie's mood.
But it was Patrick who spoke.
"You're fine, Sabine. Have a nice one."
Sabine lay in the bath for some time, but it was not out of relish. She had found herself lying perfectly still in the water as it cooled, listening for the acoustic hints of argument: the too-lengthy pauses, the staccato voices, the low hum of exasperation that characterized adult rows. They were obviously having one of sorts; but it looked kind of one-sided, as if Annie had refused to engage in battle and left Patrick to do it all himself. Annie being her friend, normally Sabine would have mentally leaped to her defense: How could he be horrible to a woman who had lost her daughter? How could he pick arguments with someone who still had not come to terms with her grief? And yet there was something about Patrick, when she looked at him closely, that seemed to suggest he was the one suffering more.
She didn't really want to go back downstairs. She didn't want to have to walk back through that battle zone, smiling and making polite conversation with Annie and Patrick just so she could go and lie on her bed and feel wretched. If I wanted to enter a war zone I could have stayed at home, she thought, and smiled grimly at her own wit. But it wasn't really a smiling matter. She didn't want Patrick and Annie to split up. Patrick obviously loved Annie, and Annie obviously loved their daughter, and they should be supporting each other so that they could get through it, not pulling apart. Sometimes it seemed so simple to Sabine that she could hardly believe that adults could get it so wrong.
But then they seemed to complicate things for the hell of it; her mother was always questioning things, even when they were going well. She could never just accept anything. And Sabine knew exactly what would happen once Justin moved in (if he hadn't already): He and Sabine would eventually fall out, and Kate, having spent however many months trying to act like they were all one big happy family, would begin weeping over the kitchen table about how she had ruined everyone's lives and did Sabine think they would be happier on their own? Because she wanted to give her some say in the matter, she really did. . . . Sabine knew exactly what she would say to this--she was quite fond of rehearsing arguments with her mother, and sometimes amazed herself when they ran true to predicted form--she would say, "Oh. So now I get a say in our life, do I? How come I never got a say when Geoff was leaving? How come I never got a say when Jim was going? Huh?" And her mother would be all crushed and apologetic and realize that she should have been much more like her own mother all along.
Sabine lay silently and soaked up the injustices of being sixteen and powerless. Finally, conscious that her fingers had shriveled like prunes, and that the temperature of the water was no longer on the warm side of comfortable, she climbed out and began toweling herself dry.
There was no one there when she came back through the living room. She didn't know whether to be relieved. But as she ran back down the wet road toward Kilcarrion, something made her look back. Annie, silhouetted against the light, stood at the side window, looking out over the garden. She didn't see Sabine. She didn't seem to see anything. Over her too-thick jumper, both hands held her stomach.
A special supper for you tonight, Sabine."
Her grandmother placed the steaming pot in the middle of the shining table, and lifted the lid with a distinctly un-Joy-like flourish.
"Mrs. H made it for you specially. Roasted vegetable casserole, with vegetarian herb and cheese dumplings. Good warming food after a day's hunting."
Sabine breathed in the rich smell, feeling her stomach constrict with hunger. She had regretted giving that boy her Mars Bar for most of the afternoon, only the pinch of extreme col
d taking her mind from the griping of her stomach.
"I thought I'd have it, too, to keep you company."
"It looks lovely," said Sabine, wondering whether it would be rude to reach in now and serve herself.
"I always think you need a good stew, or casserole, to warm you up after a day on the field," said Joy, rummaging around in the dresser for napkins. "I used to get so hungry . . . and I'd always find that even if I packed sandwiches, they would always end up falling out of my pockets, and getting trodden on by a horse."
Please hurry up, willed Sabine. According to the rules, she couldn't start eating until Joy had sat back down. Her stomach, responding to the scent of the food, let out a rumble loud enough to make Bertie's head turn inquiringly.
"Now, where did I put those napkin rings? I'm sure they were in this drawer. Perhaps Mrs. H has put them in the kitchen."
"Can I--can--?" The rich, aromatic smell of the sauce was making her dizzy.
"I think I'll just go and have a look. You don't mind waiting for a minute, do you?"
"Actually, I--"
They were interrupted by a distant clunk and thump outside the dining room. Both dogs leaped up from their places underneath the table, and ran to the door, whining and scrabbling to be let out.