Sixteen Horses by Greg Buchanan (readict TXT) 📕

‘What?’

‘He said if I died first, he was going to travel the world.’ She sighed, trying to smile. ‘He had an Irish passport.’

Out on the road, they heard a car speed past towards the town centre. Must have been breaking the limit.

‘Where did he want to go? Any place in particular?’

‘Ireland, for sure.’ Fiona’s face quivered a bit.

‘Why?’

‘He’d never been,’ Fiona said, and the back door opened.

Shelly turned when she saw the faces of her guests. Concerned. Upset.

It was George.

‘What are you doing out of bed?’ she said, rushing towards him.

He was covered in sweat.

‘George?’

He moved a step forwards and fell, dizzy, his head hitting the wall of the extension.

‘George?!’

His head was bleeding where it had hit the brick. He didn’t say a thing. His eyes were shut.

CHAPTER THIRTY-ONE

‘I love you,’ the farmer whispered, those eyes that looked back up at him so much like those horses in the earth, so much like what had happened to his land, his life.

Rebecca’s head was still bloodied where she’d fallen in the kitchen, that same blood still slick against the counter.

He drove her to the hospital.

She had awoken briefly on the journey, had tried speaking, but her words had not made much sense.

Memories ran through her mind.

She talked about a black carriage.

Her father didn’t understand.

The horse’s breathing was laboured, her nostrils flared, her neck moist with sweat.

She dipped her head into a bucket of water next to the sign. It seemed narrow for her. Rebecca thought about her eyes, how the world must look to a creature like that, being either side of her head rather than the front. It was thirty degrees Celsius. The horse had been bringing people up and down the beachfront all day, a black carriage harnessed to her back, her driver an old man.

Michael brushed the sides of the horse’s neck, her black mane, too.

‘We’ll be ready to go soon,’ he said.

Rebecca nodded.

‘We don’t get many people wanting to do this by themselves.’

Rebecca didn’t answer.

Soon she was inside, seated on the stale starched candy-stripe seats, watching the waves pull in and out at sea.

The driver did not turn around as they went. She watched the way the horse moved forwards, the way he called her ‘Annie’.

‘It’s my birthday present,’ she mumbled.

‘Oh, right.’ Michael kept his eyes ahead. ‘Well, happy birthday.’

Rebecca nodded.

What do you want most in the world?

‘You.’

You’ve already got me.

‘Still.’

Tell me what you actually want. What do you actually want?

They kept moving and moving. The ride took them past the arcades, past the cafes, past even the abandoned hotels. Down here there were rows of old white houses that had once been expensive, other buildings, wrecks of places no one visited, no one kept.

The old cinema, one of the first in the whole country.

Four false Corinthian columns stood along the front like faded tree trunks. Above, where in an ancient temple you might have seen beautiful marble friezes depicting wars and gods and the history of human suffering, there were just letters. This frieze was not triangular, but flat like the roof itself. There were only letters, bound to the front of weathered stone, several now missing.

EM—R, it read.

The doors and the windows below had been boarded up and bolted.

Outside, someone waited far away.

He had a camcorder in his hand. He was filming her ride. It was hot and sunny enough that she could barely make him out, heat-fog rising from the pavement. Rebecca wondered, briefly, thinking of this, if the horse’s feet were OK on this concrete. She’d heard something about dogs on paths, how their paws could be burned. Maybe the horse was made of sterner stuff.

She looked at the camcorder, and waved to him.

He didn’t wave back.

The driver’s head changed angle briefly, looking at the stranger too.

‘Who’s that?’

‘He paid for this,’ Rebecca said. ‘It’s his gift.’

‘He didn’t want to come and ride with you?’

‘He’s afraid,’ Rebecca said, trying to smile.

‘Of horses?’ Michael scoffed.

‘Maybe.’

They went on and on.

Later, her father would pick her up from town. She’d told him she’d gone to town with friends. Her mother had been supposed to pick her up, but she was in bed again. Still she refused to see the doctor. She’d always been like that.

‘Happy birthday,’ he said. ‘You had a good one?’

They had a cake for her back at home. He’d made it himself. It was a surprise, but she’d seen it in the byre fridge. It was full of mini edible sheep.

Rebecca thought about the horse, on and on.

‘Can I go riding?’ she asked.

‘What do you mean?’

‘Riding lessons.’

Her father sighed. ‘Why?’

‘I don’t—’

‘Ask your mother,’ he said, and that was the end of it.

Rebecca wouldn’t ask. Of course she wouldn’t ask.

The sky grew dark.

The world passed by.

Rebecca stopped having these memories.

She stopped seeing anything, even in her mind.

She had started to cough once they got inside the front doors of the hospital.

Her father drove back by himself, not telling anyone he was leaving his little girl alone, or that he was returning. He thought about the farm, about those early days. He thought about walking the fields, about the policeman, about the marshes.

There could be lovely days out here, there could be sunsets that made him cry for joy. There could be moments when the world assembled itself in his eyes, puzzle pieces of reflected light, echoes of distant bleats in the wind, the blossoming of wildflowers in colours he had no names for. He’d watch birds dance in the air, he’d listen to them call to each other through the reeds. He’d take antlers and place them all around his home.

His wife had been sick for years, in her mind and in her heart. No one had understood her, no one had understood him, what he had tried to do for all of them.

He imagined everyone thought he was just a fool, but he knew the secret of all life. He knew that thoughts were no one’s fault, not in the