True to form Flora woke at dawn on Boxing Day, and stumbled round her bedroom in the dark in a frowst of hair and iced breath. She had been too tired the night before to wash properly: her eyes were sticky and there was a disgraceful piece of orange peel under one thumbnail.
‘Pig,’ she muttered to the mirror and, in the spirit of truth, added, ‘Fat pig.’ As a penance she washed from head to toe which left her gasping.
Dressed in a pair of Kit’s trousers and a jersey, she let herself out of the sleeping house, and headed over the field towards the cottages at Jonathan’s Kilns, drawing in lungfuls of freezing air.
It was quiet and still out in the fields. She sped between the hedgerows — timeless, almost untouched — over leaf mould crisped on the top, damp and tender underneath, and through grass frozen into still life, materializing from out of the mist by the cottage. To someone watching she might have been a flaxen-haired emissary from a time when the land was river and forest.
Brazen, the retriever bitch, whimpered in her pen at the end of Danny’s garden and Flora stopped to whisper, ‘Good girl’, and to remove a burr from the tangle of cinnamon hair at her neck. Brazen nudged her shoulder in response, pushed a wet nose into her neck and Flora smiled.
Danny had been up for an hour or so, seeing to what he called his family. The local hunt was a rich one and Danny had been employed as kennelman since Rupert had transplanted him from London to the village. Rupert had provided the tied cottage and, in return, Danny helped out with the Dysarts’ horses. (Occasionally, he stood in for Tyson as chauffeur but passengers had to be sure he had not been at the whisky.) Since both hounds and horses were Danny’s meat and drink it was a lazy-daisy job, as he said in his broad Cockney.
Danny had been waiting for Flora, who always came to see him before a meet, and in the cottage the kettle was on the hob. He was pouring warm milk into buckets for the pregnant bitches which were staying behind when she arrived and nodded in greeting. In the other pen was a whirlpool of dangling tongues and flailing tails, and the noise was deafening. Stirred by it, Flora laughed because the day was beginning, because she was cold and it was fun to be cold sometimes – because it was all such fun.
‘How many couples running?’ she shouted above the din, and picked up a bucket of milk. ‘Ow.’ She winced at the warmth stinging her fingers. ‘That’s hot.’
‘Fifteen.’ Terse to the point of silence at the best of times, Danny never bothered to say good morning. Flora turned her back on him because she knew he did not approve of anyone spoiling his hounds, put down the bucket, stuck her milky fingers through the netting and let Bouncer lick them.
‘There, boysie. Nice, isn’t it?’
‘Stop it, Miss Flora.’
Danny never bothered with good form, nor with being polite to his superiors, for Danny was a free spirit who had alighted on their hearth. With the exception of Rupert, no one really knew Danny, only that he had limped into Hinton Dysart from a trench on the Somme, a stranger with trench-foot and a mashed-up leg, an unshakeable attachment to Rupert, a taste for sentimental poetry, solitude and drink. All of which Rupert (uncharacteristically) supplied and told the family to bugger off if they raised the subject.
Danny unlocked the first pen and beckoned to Flora. She picked up the bucket, pushed her way through the palpitating flanks and wet muzzles and poured the contents into a trough. The noise level fell dramatically.
‘There, my lovelies.’ Danny wiped his nose with the back of his hand, and ran it down the flank of the bitch huddled at his feet. ‘Not so good, Lady, luv? What’s the matter?’
Lady whimpered and Flora hunkered down beside Danny on the concrete. ‘Is she ill?’ Danny gently shoved Lady over so he could examine the opposite flank.
‘Maidy-Lady,’ Flora stroked her, ‘we can’t have the best nose in the pack out of action.’
Lady buried her head in Danny’s breeches and with the tenderness of a lover, he spread his fingers over her chest and listened.
‘Danny, look.’ Flora pointed at a red patch between the toes of one of Lady’s front paws. ‘She’s lame.’
Danny never addressed a human if he could address an animal. ‘How did you get that?’ Danny took Lady’s muzzle in his hand and said, ‘You stupid bitch. Why didn’t you tell me before?’
In the old days, Danny’s uncanny gift would have landed him at the stake and, awed as ever, Flora watched as man and animal exchanged information and concluded how much easier it would be if she concentrated on animals and gave up the struggle to understand her family. Or herself, come to that. Lady dropped her nose, and her tail went slack. Danny pushed her aside and got up.
‘Knacker’s yard for clapped-out bitches.’
Flora sniffed at the air, and looked up. ‘Should be a screaming scent,’ she said. ‘Just right.’
‘Depends,’ said Danny, and she knew he had gone silent on her. She scrunched her fingers under her armpits and waited for him to collect the pans and lock up the pen.
Danny stopped to stick a Blue Prior cigarette, made from local tobacco, in his mouth and smoked it as they walked through the yard, scattering hens. By this point, he had unbent enough to tell Flora the latest gossip.
‘The new farmer over at ‘Amptons’ ‘as put three of the fields to plough. It’ll foul the scent.’ He picked tobacco off his lip. ‘Probably doesn’t ‘old with ‘unting.’
‘Mr Terence keeps poultry,’ Flora pointed out. ‘Of course he’ll be sympathetic.’
‘Bloody right.’ Danny pushed open the door and they went inside to the immaculately kept cottage that was Danny’s home.
Sloshing with tea, Flora made her way back to Hinton Dysart to a cacophony of renewed baying. Danny’s strangeness and his silences never bothered her as they had Polly, who considered Danny an intruder, and frightening. ‘He and Father always act so oddly together,’ Polly complained. ‘I don’t understand it. Danny seems more family to him than we do.’
Flora had to agree, and since she was at that age when her own feelings muddled her, she had no answer. What she did know was that Rupert, bottle in pocket, marched down the road like the soldier he had been, twice, even three or four times a week, to Danny’s cottage and had done so since she could remember. Later, flushed, sometimes belligerent, sometimes maudlin, the pair emerged. Occasionally, they went on a spree over by Odiham, and Flora sometimes saw them come home with exaggerated care in the twilight. The sight made her feel funny: awkward, embarrassed and, curiously, let down.
Once she had seen Danny naked, washing by the fire in his kitchen, a thin, white-skinned figure with a dusting of sandy hair on his chest and a scar on his thigh. Transfixed by the shapes swinging between his legs, and by the way he cupped them in his hands as he washed, Flora stared, only ducking away when he reached for a towel. She ran home, and never made the connection between the sight and the sensations in her own body. Even so, she hadn’t told Polly.
Well Road was slippery and she was forced to hug the centre. A car breasted the rise, drove towards her, weaving over the frozen puddles, and slowed down.
‘Morning.’ Robin Lofts wound down the window of a Ford which had seen better days. The handle gave an unoiled shriek.
‘Morning.’ Flora stopped. ‘Did you have a good Christmas?’
‘Christmas? What’s that? Never heard of it.’ Robin folded his arms across the steering wheel and smiled, and Flora knew that she was not meant to feel sorry for him. Under his hat, his face was grey with exhaustion. ‘I’m so tired, I can barely speak.’
‘Oh, I am sorry,’ said Flora. ‘Then you won’t be coming out today?’
Robin bent over so his forehead touched his hands and then looked up. ‘Good Lord, no,’ he said. ‘I never hunt.’ He added matter-of-factly, ‘I don’t like the killing.’
‘I see.’
‘No, you don’t,’ he said in the same tone that intrigued, and piqued, Flora, ‘but it’s quite all right.’ Clearly, Dr Lofts held strong views. Flora was aware that she was under scrutiny — a bug under a microscope? or an interesting arrangement of muscles? — and the knowledge that her hair was falling out of its plait gave Dr Lofts an advantage.
Their frozen breath met and swirled.
‘The way I feel,’ he was saying, ‘I shall go to bed for a week and never stir. It was a long night.’
He did not add: a panic-stricken episode filled with the cries of a labouring mother and the spectre of a nearly botched delivery because he, the doctor, had been too tired to notice that the baby’s heartbeat was dropping.
‘Nothing bad, I hope,’ she said, brushing away a wisp of hair trapped between her lips.
‘Only birth.’ Robin found himself wondering what it would feel like to plait Flora’s hair back into place. ‘A tricky breech.’
Flora hoped she was not blushing. After all, birth was perfectly natural. Nevertheless, her eyes slithered away from his gaze and fixed on the Gladstone bag on the passenger seat. ‘Will somebody give you breakfast, Dr Lofts?’ she asked, imagining she was on safe ground, and then realizing, with something approaching desperation, that he might think she was prying into his private life. ‘I mean...’ Now she did go bright red. ‘I’m sorry... but you might be called out again.’
Robin groaned theatrically, and covered his ears. ‘I instructed my sister, Ada, to keep bacon and eggs on the go and if anybody, anything, gets in the way of this man and his bacon...’
The idea of food made him feel more energetic. He sat up in the car seat and some of the exhaustion left his face. Flora noted that where his neck met his collar the colour of the skin was lighter and a scar puckered the tip of his chin. Now that made him interesting. Moreover, she approved of the way his eyebrows were unusually dark for his colouring. Back in the nursery, Flora’s book of jungle animals still sat on the bookshelf. Dr Lofts reminded her of a mongoose. A beautiful brown animal with telling eyes, which, with a flick of its head, could sink its teeth into the enemy and never let go.
‘Are you enjoying your work in Nether Hinton?’
‘Was it you,’ Robin’s interesting eyebrows questioned Flora, ‘who warned me I would have to live here for fifteen years before I would be accepted?’
A little piqued he hadn’t remembered she had told him that in Rolly Harris’s yard, Flora smiled nevertheless. ‘Goodness,’ she said. ‘It’s that bad?’
He was silent, tapping his finger on the steering wheel. ‘Yes,’ he said, and a hint of uncertainty in his voice made Flora’s heart quicken in sympathy.
By now she was sure she was frozen to the last toenail. ‘I really must go. I am sorry you won’t be following the hunt, it’s the tradition round here on Boxing Day, but I understand. I do hope you get some rest, Dr Lofts.’
Robin depressed the accelerator, and sent a cloud of black exhaust into the sparkling verge. ‘Thank you. I will.’ He shoved at the gear stick.
‘Dr Lofts, do you need any help at the surgery at all?’ Flora spoke off the top of her head. ‘I mean, if I helped at the surgery then people would—’ She came to a halt.
They looked at each other, and Flora imagined she detected a flash of impatience and offence, and thought: He is rather frightening. Then Robin’s face cleared and he smiled, and she saw beyond to a sweetness and gentleness she did not normally associate with men.
‘Thank you,’ said Robin. ‘I’ll certainly think about that.’
‘Goodbye, then,’ she said.
He watched her tall figure with its attractive, pear-shaped bottom walk away, and concluded that she had not meant to be patronizing. Rather, in keeping with her generous body Miss Flora Dysart possessed a generous spirit.
*
By ten thirty the drive was seething: sightseers, grooms, horses shifted and stamped over the gravel and left hoof indentations on the edge of the lawn.
‘Flora! Hallo, there. Is Polly here?’ Cecil Chanctonbury urged his mount through the crush alongside Guinevere.
‘Hallo, Cecil.’ Cecil always pronounced his name Ceecil, but Flora could never bring herself to do the same because it made her laugh. ‘Happy Christmas, Cecil. Polly’s over there.’ She pointed her whip in the direction of her sister. ‘Groaning, no doubt, at how stiff she’ll feel after today.’
‘Flora. There you are.’ Harry Goddard cut Cecil off and edged his horse neatly in between the two. ‘How are you?’
‘Excuse me,’ protested Cecil.
‘Bad luck, old boy,’ said Harry, and waved him away. ‘The spoils to the strongest and all that.’
Flora tried not to giggle. ‘Harry!’ she said reprovingly. Her habit caught on the end of Harry’s spur and she wrestled to free it. ‘I wish,’ she said for the hundredth time, ‘that I could always ride astride.’
Harry helped to rescue the black worsted. ‘I think you should know that when George Sand appeared on the hunting field in breeches, tout Paris observed she had the biggest bottom in France.’
‘Harry!’
‘Wish I could see yours, old girl. Would make my day.’ Harry touched his heels to his mount’s sides and it shimmied forward. Guinevere picked her hoofs up over the iced gravel and followed.
‘Where’s Father?’ Flora asked Danny, who was handing round the mulled wine.
Danny jerked a finger in the direction of the stables just as Rupert, whip held high, clattered into view on his raw-boned bay beast. Challenged by the noise and colour, the bay responded and backed up against the wall with an explosion of frozen gravel. ‘Keep still, damn you.’ Rupert slapped his horse’s neck.
The huntsman had driven the hounds into an untidy bunch by the corner of the house. The whipper-in cursed, and wielded his whip at the rogues who were determined to break ranks. Their baying took on a higher, more frantic, note.
‘Don’t bloody do that,’ shouted Danny above the noise, when the whip was used too enthusiastically on Jupiter.
‘Shush, Danny.’ Not wishing for a scene, Flora touched his shoulder. Frowning, he glanced up at her.
‘They’re my ‘ounds, Miss Flora.’
She stared down at him, struck by the contrast between this taut, anguished Danny and the softened, naked man on whom she had once spied.
Danny handed Flora a glass of wine. It trickled down her throat, sweet, almost cloying, releasing its afterburn. Her senses flared in response, and when she looked up, her vision alcohol-edged, the world was twice as bright.
As if piped onto the trees and bushes by a master confectioner, the frost glittered silver white. Behind them, lit from cellar to attic, the house reposed on a carpet of ice, its paintwork gleaming. In front of it swirled the kaleidoscope of the hunt: scarlet and black coats, dripping noses, breeches strained over thighs, top hats, encrusted here and there with green. Warring with the scent of frost, was the odour of fresh horse droppings and the yeasty tonic note of horse and sweat. Voices, hounds, horses and movement counter-pointed against each other – so familiar and so much part of Flora.
The sun was beginning to patch the carpet of ice. Her muscles tightened in anticipation. She told herself to be careful: a lot of ground was sheltered, north-facing and treacherous. Guinevere arched her neck and jumped back on stiff legs. Drops of her drink splattered down Flora’s habit and she handed back the glass to Danny.
There’s nothing like it, she thought, dabbing at the spots of liquid. Nothing.
Matty had retreated to the steps out of the way of the horses and Kit edged alongside her on Vindictive to say goodbye.
‘Good luck,’ said the small figure huddled in a musquash coat.
‘You will take care?’ A matching hat was pulled down over her face so that only her mouth was visible.
‘Don’t worry.’
Matty handed up a packet wrapped in waxed paper. ‘Anchovy paste sandwiches,’ she said. ‘I know you get hungry mid-morning.’
‘Terrific,’ said Kit and stowed them in his coat tail. ‘I’ve never had that sort of treatment before.’ He grabbed Matty’s leather-clad hand and kissed it with affection. Flora, who had just ridden up, was taken in – she had no idea how much easier it was for Kit to demonstrate affection for his wife in public.
‘How kind you are to me,’ Kit said to Matty, whose mouth unclamped in a smile of relief.
Robbie waved from her position at the top of the steps. ‘Think of us back here, won’t you?’
Danny told the whipper-in to bugger off and went to fetch the gun which always came with him out hunting. Just in case.
With a cracking of whips, flushed from drink and cold, they moved off into the rising sun.
Kit and Flora rode up in the front, Kit, from long habit, settled into Vindictive’s rolling stride, confident that his horse liked nothing better than an obstacle-strewn gallop. As he and Flora turned left out of the drive, he looked back to the foreshortened figure of his wife on the steps watching them. Brother and sister raised their whips in farewell.
Hunting fraternities are the same everywhere and were replicated in hunting country all over England that Boxing Day, as recognizable as a Surtees print. So, too, were the rituals, and topics of conversation: gossip about bloodstock and breeding, familiar jokes – and the secret quasi-sexual thrill that pulsed under the hunting coats.
The horses could not be persuaded to walk, and the riders jogged past Jonathan’s Kilns, filed through the narrow hunt gate and then let their horses rip over the turf towards the straggle of beeches at Long Copse.
As always, Guinevere did her convincing imitation of a crab at the sight of an open gate. She sidled up to the opening, pranced as Flora scolded her, and then barged through knocking Flora’s leg on the post as she did so. Then they were away over the mud-freckled turf with the wind cutting across Flora’s cheeks.
The hounds drew at Long Copse. The field watched, tense and expectant, the horses pricked their ears and shuddered in a cloud of vaporized breath.
Then it began. The lead hound had worked his way to the far corner of the copse and sounded. Another took it up, and in a split second the music of a pack in full cry reverberated through the chilled air.
A bowler-hatted farmer in ratcatcher on a roan lifted his whip and pointed to the west. ‘Charlie’s gone over to Horsedown,’ he said to Flora. ‘They’ll be crossing the hedges.’
Flora shivered pleasurably in anticipation.
A surge of horses, a cry from the riders, and the line broke. Everyone went for it together across the field, through the gate and up into Swanthorpe’s territory. Too busy holding in Guinevere to think, Flora guided her over the hedge, then a post and rails.
A delicious, tingling feeling exploded in her chest. This is what I love. The sound of hoofs over turf drummed in her ears, the muscles in her legs clenched and rose with the horse, the bruise on her shin ached and swelled. The roan thundered past, bearing the farmer.
‘Charlie’s going to double back,’ he shouted. ‘Stick with me, Miss Flora.’
Panting hard, Flora reined in Guinevere, and together she and her companion picked their way up the grassy rise above the valley floor. Down below, they saw the hounds check and, for a few minutes the pack milled, noses hard to the ground. Again a hound sounded and the pack raced back down the valley.
‘There’s Charlie.’ The farmer jerked his whip, and Flora saw quite clearly the fox climbing up into a ploughed field, its coat almost the same colour as the russet soil.
‘My God,’ said the farmer. ‘He’ll take them over the hedges.’
Flora strained to get a better view. ‘Hurrah,’ she said.
The hedges were a series of blackthorn barriers as high as a horse’s withers. They guarded gaping ditches and were talked about with respect as the biggest in North Hampshire. They took nerve and a steady hand.
The field was now moving up the plough where, a few seconds ago, Flora had seen the fox. The horses floundered – and then they were out, bearing left across the grass that led to the first of the hedges. Itching to follow, Flora watched the scarlet arc of the Master’s coat as he soared over the first obstacle. A grey followed, ridden side-saddle and, after that, the whole field made a gigantic charge.
After the first hedge, two horses galloped on riderless and after the third there was another. Flora breathed in sharply. ‘Ye ancient gods, go on, Kit. Go on, Father. DO IT.’
‘I’ve got to go,’ she said to the farmer. Away she went down the slope in a hail of mud.
Rising and falling like a wave over the hedges, Rupert’s bay pounded over the ground in between. The hounds bayed, high and excited. Then, as the stallion rose for what must have been the seventh or eighth time, he appeared to stop in mid-air, a powerful, scarlet-topped icon, before crashing down. Spinning in a lazy parabola over his horse came Rupert.
Splayed over the hedge, the horse lay quiet for a terrible moment, then struggled frantically before crashing with a scream onto its rider below.
Matty fought the desire to retreat to her bedroom and remain there for the rest of the day. But it was Boxing Day, the house was full of guests and Mrs Dawes was treating her to sighs and long silences. In addition, Polly’s nanny was apparently being sick in the servants’ cloakroom (‘A little bit sinister, don’t you think, Mrs Kit?’ commented Robbie), and the baby appeared to have taken against Robbie. Babies had more sense than she had supposed, concluded Matty. The day stretched out, milestoned by domestic crises.
‘I had no idea,’ Matty confided to Mrs Pengeally over coffee, ‘that running a house was so full of problems. Everywhere I turn I trip over someone’s hurt feelings.’
This was quite a speech for Matty, and a measure of her irritation. Mrs Pengeally looked magisterial – something she was not often able to do as the vicarage was small and, worse, understaffed. ‘Dear Mrs Dysart, if I can be of any help do let me know.’
‘For instance,’ Matty fiddled in her cuff for her handkerchief, ‘Mrs Dawes does not wish to serve tea in the drawing room for no other reason than that it has always been served in the library.’
Mrs Pengeally’s mouth had sprouted a coffee fringe and she scrubbed at it with her serviceable handkerchief. ‘Ask her advice first,’ she said. ‘I always think that works.’
‘Does it?’ Matty retrieved hers, delicate, lace-edged, from her sleeve, unaware of the glances Mrs Pengeally was directing at it. ‘Mrs Pengeally, I’m sorry to be bothering you with all this.’
‘Nothing to it, my dear.’ Mrs Pengeally helped herself generously to the sugar. ‘Take it from an old hand.’ And over a second cup, Mrs Pengeally proceeded to demonstrate just how old a hand she was. So grateful was Matty that she offered to take her out to see how the hunt was going.
It was midday by the time the pony trap was ready. After the log fire in the drawing room, the cold was vicious and, despite lap rugs, both women shivered as Jem, the stable boy, urged Billy into a fast trot.
‘There they are.’ Matty pointed up the road where a glimmer of scarlet was visible making its way towards the hedges. The horn sounded; unmistakable and provoking.
‘Off they go,’ said Mrs Pengeally through her handkerchief, and the colour whipped into Matty’s face. Forgetting her fear of horses, she half rose in her seat.
‘Take care, Mrs Dysart. You’ll upset the cart.’
‘Can you see my husband, Mrs Pengeally?’
‘I think he’s there, up at the head of the field.’
Matty leant foward and tapped Jem on the shoulder. ‘Drive up the road, please, Jem.’
The thin, sharp air was alive with baying, pounding and whinnying, shot through with the rounder note of the horn which made Matty shiver inside.
‘Go on, Jem,’ she urged, and Mrs Pengeally clutched at her hat.
At the crest of the slope, the road veered round to the right and, as they went round at a smart clip, they heard the scream from the direction of the hedges. High and full of agony.
‘Oh, no,’ Matty gasped. ‘Oh, no.’ The pony jerked up his head and skidded round the corner.
‘Don’t look.’ Idiotically, Mrs Pengeally tried to cover Matty’s face with her hands, and as Matty struggled free, she knocked Jem and Billy missed his footing. The trap slewed to a halt, one wheel spinning on the verge, the other rammed into the ditch.
‘Let go, Mrs Pengeally. Let me... go.’ Matty fought free of the other woman, fell down from the trap and ran towards the gate into the field.
The gate catch was frozen but Matty pulled at it with a strength she was not aware she possessed until it yielded. Then, forgetting she had not run properly for years, she tore full tilt over the uneven ground towards the untidy knot of people by the hedges.
It was over when Matty arrived. The bay was already down, the broken bone in its hind leg protruding through the skin. Beside him lay Rupert, arms and legs assembled in strange positions, blood rushing with horrifying speed from a cut on his face.
Matty pushed her way through the ring of people, knelt down and took Rupert’s hand. It was a useless thing to do, but the voice in her head dealing with the emergency said it was important, and she cradled it, cold and limp, in her own as if her life depended on it. She shifted closer to the object lying on the turf that was her father-in-law, and mud smeared over her frock.
The stallion screamed again, and feet ran to and fro. Matty continued to stare at Rupert, focusing on the blood-embroidered face and listening to the snoring breaths. More hoofs pounded across the field and Kit, hatless and mud-covered, shouted, ‘Where’s the gun?’
Danny came running from the direction of the gate with the rifle. He split it, loaded and handed it over to Kit who knelt beside the horse.
‘Easy, boy.’ Matty knew with dreadful clarity that Kit was almost crying. ‘I’m coming. I’m coming.’ He piloted the gun to the horse’s head and fought to keep it on target as the stallion reared his head. ‘Help me, Danny,’ he said.
‘Get back,’ shouted someone else.
‘Help me,’ said Kit.
And Matty continued to cradle Rupert’s hand and to gaze into his face until the gun went off and the screaming ceased.
It required four men to carry Rupert across the field.
One of the spectator’s cars raced back into the village to warn the doctor, and Robin Lofts was waiting at the house when the procession arrived. He took Rupert’s pulse and ran a professional eye over the angle of his legs. He noted the pallor, the breathing, the wet patch where urine had leaked, and asked to be shown the telephone.
Rupert’s children waited as Robin worked. The odours of horse, mud, and disinfectant from his bag filled the library where Rupert had been taken, and the lamp threw a dim, sinister light over the form on the sofa.
‘What do you think, Dr Lofts?’ Flora grabbed Robin.
‘It’s serious,’ he said, ‘and he must get to hospital as soon as possible. The ambulance is on its way from Fleet.’
Kit moved towards the sofa and looked down at his father. Wanting something to do, he bent over to wipe the saliva off Rupert’s chin.
Barrenness and death, thought Matty.
An extra loud breath from the injured man brought Robin back to the bedside. Breath soughed in and out of Rupert’s nostrils, and a fresh clot of blood appeared in one.
‘Quick,’ said Polly in a high, panicked voice. ‘Quick. He’s dying. Do something!’