HartsLove (2 page)

He was aware of movement and saw his father loping towards him, Gryffed, his ancient wolfhound, padding silently behind. Charles de Granville was shivering in his tattered black morning jacket yet he hummed as he slithered in the icy scum. Garth could just hear the end of a tuneless ‘Yankee Doodle'. How familiar the song was,
even though, on this freezing morning and with the ‘for sale' sign creaking, it seemed to Garth that it must have been another boy who, in a flurry of sisters, had once tumbled down the stairs, giggling and shouting as Charles pretended to be the feather in Yankee Doodle's hat and chased them around Hartslove's great hall. Garth waited until his father was quite near, then deliberately climbed on to the remains of the gate and forced it to swing. He longed for his father to scold so that he could blaze back. But Charles de Granville just settled his thin frame on his soldier's legs. ‘Ah, Garth,' he said, thrusting one hand into a sagging pocket and dropping the other on to Gryffed's head.

With dogged fury Garth swung to and fro, wishing a terrible wish: he wished his father would vanish as his mother had vanished. Immediately he was filled with panic. The twins believed that wishes came true. What if his father did vanish? He swung faster.
That's not what I wish
, he thought frantically and levered his body up so that he was doing a handstand on top of the gate. He cartwheeled along the narrow bar, then whipped his legs over and vaulted to the ground. He did not know how he did these acrobatics. To an outsider they gave an impression of weightless freedom; to Garth they were an anchor. So long as he could control his body, he could make some sense of life. If he lost this control, as his sister Daisy had since her pony had fallen on her five years before . . . He gritted his teeth. He
had avoided riding since Daisy's accident. The moment her legs had been crushed was a recurring nightmare. He did two backflips in quick succession.
I won't even imagine it. I won't
.

Charles watched his son vault and flip, then picked a sprig of berried holly and proffered it along with his most crinkly, twinkly, charming smile. His eyes were bright but not with drink as they usually were. Garth could recognise that special drink-brightness a mile off, just as he could recognise the drink-smile and the drink-laughter and the drink smell-on-the-breath. This was a different brightness though it was just as familiar. Garth's throat tightened. He ungritted his teeth. ‘Father,' he warned, ‘you haven't –'

‘Hartslove luck,' Charles interrupted, and banged his left heel three times, spitting into the mess of winter weeds.

Garth choked. Now he knew exactly why Charles had come down the drive, and it was monstrous, MONSTROUS. Though the ‘for sale' sign marked the final ruin of the de Granvilles of Hartslove, Charles de Granville was about to hand over cash to a horse-dealer.

This was actually worse than monstrous, it was hideously cruel because before everything had started to go wrong, the arrival of one particular type of horse had often been a special moment between father and son. This type of horse was not a riding horse; it was a horse chosen by Charles from an advertisement in a racing newspaper, and the horse was always called The One because, until it disappointed, it
was always going to be the one that won the Derby. When delivery day arrived, Charles would call Skelton and the three of them would wait right here, Charles biting his fingers, Skelton smoking his pipe and Garth hopping from foot to foot. As the hour approached, Charles and Garth alone, without ever asking Skelton to join in – that was the best bit – would bang their left heel three times and spit. ‘Hartslove luck!' Charles would whisper. ‘Shut your eyes, Garth, my boy, and when you open them you'll see the next winner of the Derby.'

His father was whispering now, his tone pleading. ‘This really is The One, Garth. Bang your heel and spit! Do it! Do it!'

Garth did bang his heel and spit. He banged his heel hard on his father's toe and aimed a vicious gob at his father's cheek. He also drew back a clenched fist. Gryffed prickled and growled. Garth let fly, missed, and before he could let fly again, there were hoof-beats.

There was just one horse – Garth could hear that – and instead of a light, steady beat, there was chaotic skidding. When the horse finally appeared, it was not being led by a man, it was dragging a man behind it. Charles sharply ordered Gryffed to be still and pushed Garth aside.

‘This colt yours?' the dragged man panted. He jabbed at reins flecked with froth and crammed his bowler hat more firmly on to his head. Despite the cold and his loud checked suit, he was sweating.

‘No!' shouted Garth.

Charles bit his lip. ‘I believe so,' he said.

‘Money?'

‘I have it here.' Charles fumbled in his pocket.

The man snatched the wad of notes. ‘I'll count it.'

Garth counted too. Ten, twenty, forty, sixty, eighty, a hundred, ten, twenty – Garth's eyes widened. Two hundred. Three hundred. His mouth dried. Three hundred and sixty, seventy, eighty. Four hundred.
Four hundred!
Enough notes to get rid of that ‘for sale' sign. He turned to his father but for the moment Charles had eyes only for the horse. The man pocketed the notes. ‘Guineas, wasn't it?' he said, and held out a bag.

Charles coughed and dipped into another pocket. Four hundred shillings, dropped in uneven handfuls, formed a mountain in the bag.

At last the man was satisfied. ‘I'll give you a receipt.' He thrust the horse's rein at Charles and scribbled something on a dirty piece of paper. ‘There,' he said. ‘It's yours, and I wish you joy of it. It's hauled me all the way from Liverpool and I'm less fond of it now than I was when I first saw it and I wasn't that fond of it then.' He laughed sourly and gave the colt an unfriendly slap. It took no notice. ‘It's a scatty thing. Three years old and no sense at all.' He turned to go.

Charles fiddled with the reins, suddenly eager. ‘Drink for your trouble?' He was just putting off the moment when he and Garth would be left alone. The dealer knew
it and gave a pitying sneer. ‘No, guv'nor. I'll get something in town before I get the train. Oh –' the man clapped his bowler even more firmly on to his head just as the colt, jigging about, caught the top of Charles's arm between two large incisors – ‘it bites.'

Garth wrenched the lead-rope from his father and threw it at the dealer. ‘Take it back. There's been a mistake. We don't want it.'

The dealer did not catch the rope. Instead he jangled the bag triumphantly. ‘Well, sonny, me neither!' He chuckled loudly and walked briskly off.

Surprised to find itself free, the colt walked swiftly after the man, and Charles had to run to catch it. There was a small tussle before it agreed to come back through the Hartslove gate, only to shy sharply first at Gryffed, who followed every move his master made, and then at the ‘for sale' sign.

Despite Garth, and despite the animal being nothing like its advertisement – it was even the wrong colour, chestnut instead of bay – Charles's eyes were sparkling again. If drink was Charles's prop, racehorses were his drug, every fix bursting with promise. ‘This
is
The One, Garth,' he burst out, holding tight to the rein. He really believed it. It was winter now, but as he smelled the sweet smell of the colt's sweat and felt the strength of its will against his own, he could already see the Derby course bathed in early-summer sunshine and a jockey wearing the red
de Granville silks punching the air in victory. His heart glowed.

Garth could not contain himself. He swore and swore again. He swore until he could think of no more swear words. ‘How many The Ones have there been already, Pa? Ten? Twenty? And how many have done anything for us except eat up money? You're a . . . you're a . . .' He had used up all his bad words so he kicked the gate until it threatened to collapse completely.

His father paid no attention. He was too busy running his hands up and down the horse's front legs and over its withers. ‘See here, Garth, he's not much to look at but he's by Rataplan out of Hybla and his half-sister won the Oaks in '54. He's got the makings of a star.'

‘He's a horse – a hopeless, bloody great rubbish horse!'

Charles stood back. He was smiling, and that was when Garth finally exploded, attacking his father with fists and boots and roaring as loudly as the bear whose head and pelt lay outside their father's room must have roared on the day it earned its title ‘The Cannibal'. Gryffed's hackles rose. Had Charles given the word, he would have gone for Garth's throat. No word came so he stayed sitting, though he shook and his upper lip curled above his teeth.

‘How dare you!' howled Garth. ‘You're the reason we're having to leave here. You're the reason the girls'll have to go and live with Aunt Barbara. You're the reason I'll have to go
into the army because where else is there for me? You're the reason for the end of Hartslove. It'll be as if our family never existed.' He was furious to discover that he was crying. ‘Why don't you just DIE?'

The horse, terrified, reared. Garth did not care, he pummelled and clobbered until, in final desperation, he blasted, ‘I suppose it was because she saw this coming that Ma went away.'

The words hit Charles far harder than any bang in the gut. He sagged, suddenly an old man. It was hard for Garth to keep pummelling after that and, despite himself, his punches died away, leaving him breathing in short, steamy puffs. Charles stood quietly for several minutes. Garth's heart jerked. He felt quite empty. ‘Pa,' he said. ‘Pa.' He no longer wanted to punch. Instead he wanted, quite desperately, to turn the clock back, not just half an hour, but back to the days when his father had never sagged and he and Garth had wrestled in fun. How reassuringly solid Charles had felt then, for all his spiky frame, and how Garth had loved him. He had loved his mother too, but even when physically there, she had never actually seemed very present. ‘It's like being hugged by a cobweb,' Lily had once said, and the name had stuck. Indeed, after their mother had gone, the de Granville children wondered guiltily whether she had heard them calling her ‘the Cobweb' and taken that as her cue to sweep herself away.

Garth swallowed. ‘Pa,' he said again.

Charles swallowed too. ‘Garth.'

Neither seemed to know what to say next and the colt was restive. Eventually, with an apologetic murmur and a self-deprecatory shrug, Charles began to urge the creature up the stable drive. There was crunching on the gravel. Skelton was striding down. Charles greeted him and within moments was reciting the horse's breeding. He already seemed to have forgotten about Garth.

The ‘for sale' sign flapped and the boy's temper surged again. How dare his father? How DARE he? Doubling over, he found a pebble. Taking careful aim, he threw it at the horse's rump with all the force his anger could muster. It hit true. The horse grunted and spun round, whisking the rope through Charles's hand. It galloped straight back down the drive, with only Garth between itself and the road.

Garth knew exactly what he was going to do. He was going to step smartly aside and let the animal gallop through the gate, right back to Liverpool and into the sea if it damned well wanted. What did it matter? Four hundred guineas were already lost. He forced himself to watch with steely unconcern as the reins swung between the colt's front legs. ‘Trip over. Slip on the ice. Break a leg,' he muttered, blocking his ears against his father's shouted alarm and stepping out of the horse's way as it swished past. ‘That's right. Get lost.'

But at the gate, the animal hesitated. Which way to go? Two long chestnut ears flipped in different directions.
Two smoky nostrils flared. A tremor shuddered down its back legs and Garth could see where the pebble had made a small cut in its ungainly hindquarters. It turned, and two large, childishly expectant eyes peeped through a straggly forelock. The ears reversed their flip, then reversed again. Before it could make up its mind as to its next move, Charles ran past and it was recaptured. ‘Thank God!' Charles said, unable to disguise the reproach in his voice.

‘Too scared to catch him yourself, Master Garth?' Skelton, following close behind, knew just how to rile. It was something he practised with pleasure. Garth growled, glared, then fled up the castle drive, over the drawbridge lying aross the old moat, under the archway, across the courtyard and through the antique doorway into the Hartslove hall, where he stopped in front of a boy as furious as himself. ‘I hate everyone! I hate everything!' he cried, though he got no answer, the Furious Boy being one of many pale life-sized statues brought to Hartslove by a previous de Granville from a Grand Tour of Europe. Garth turned right and ran into the dining room. A trestle from the servants' hall had taken the place of the original dining table, but the oak sideboard was still under the Landseer portrait of his mother and on it, between two stubby candles, was a bottle of brandy his father had left. With only the smallest hesitation Garth reached for it, pulled off the stopper and drank the contents. He gasped.
The taste was vile, but a fire ignited in his belly. His eyes narrowed.

Nursing the fire, he lit a lamp and, skirting the wooden lift that plied a creaky trade between the dining room and the kitchen directly below, he ran down stone steps, past the kitchen door, then down another flight of steps until he reached the old dungeons, now used as larders. He shivered. Even in high summer it was corpse-cold down here, and during the winter it was colder than the ice house. Spectral light seeped through the tiny, crusted windows, as though some very old animal was blinking. He bumped his head on a dead hare hanging in stiff splendour from one of the many bloodstained hooks. His heart banged but the brandy kept him going.

At the far end of the dungeons was a small door with a huge key poking from the lock. The key was superfluous since the door was never fastened. Nevertheless, Garth had only been through the door once before; this was his father's private territory. The door groaned open at Garth's push. He stepped inside. The air was so thick his footsteps were smothered in the gloom. To his right he could just make out a stone slab. He held his lamp up. Fuzzily revealed was an Aladdin's cave of bottles, all neatly laid between ancient round arches dating from the castle's earliest days.