The Horse Dancer (56 page)

‘You want to get up?’ He sounded surprised.

‘I think it would be a good idea. We have to speak to the police, remember. Madame . . . was going to ring them for us.’ She could see her knickers under the great walnut chest of drawers. She flushed at the thought of how they had ended up there.

‘Tash?’

‘What?’ She pulled them on, her back to him, the bed-spread hiding her naked body from him.

‘Are you okay?’

‘I’m fine.’ She wrestled the knickers over her hips and turned to him. She kept her gaze bright, neutral. Behind it she wished him a slow, painful death. ‘Why? Shouldn’t I be?’ He was trying to read her mood. He smiled, shrugged, a little uncertain.

‘I just think we should get on,’ she continued. ‘Remember what we’re doing here.’ And before he could say anything, she had grabbed her things and was headed for the bathroom.

The gendarme had spoken to the administrative staff at Le Cadre Noir before he had come to the château.

‘There have been no reports of such a girl here,’ he said, as they sat in the drawing room over coffee provided by Madame, who had retired to a discreet distance, ‘but they have assured me they will certainly let you know should she arrive. Will you be staying on?’

Natasha and Mac glanced at each other.

‘I guess so,’ said Mac. ‘This is the only place Sarah’s likely to come to. We’ll stay until she gets here.’

Their story had prompted the same response in the policeman as it had in Madame: faint disbelief, the query hanging in the air as to how would-be parents could tolerate the idea of a child travelling so far alone. ‘May I ask why you think she would head for Le Cadre Noir? You are aware that it is an élite academy?’

‘Her grandfather. He was a member, or whatever you call it, a long time ago. It was he who seemed to believe that she would come here.’

The inspector seemed satisfied with that response. He scribbled a few more notes in his pad.

‘And she has been using my credit card. We know that it has been used
en route
in France,’ Natasha added. ‘All the indications are that she is headed this way.’

The policeman’s expression revealed nothing. ‘We will place the gendarmes within a fifty-mile radius on alert. If anyone sees her, we will let you know.’ He shrugged. ‘It will not be easy, though, to distinguish one young woman on a horse around here – you must understand that in a place like Saumur we are surrounded by people on horseback.’

‘We do understand,’ said Natasha.

After the policeman had left, they were silent. Natasha gazed around the room at the heavy drapes, the stuffed birds in glass cases.

‘We could drive around,’ he said. ‘I guess it’s better than sitting here all day. Madame said she would ring if anything happened.’ He made as if to touch her arm, but Natasha moved away, busying herself with her bag.

‘I don’t suppose it makes sense for both of us to travel,’ she said. She wanted to punch him when he wore his vaguely hurt expression. ‘I’ll have a walk around the academy. You go. We’ll keep in touch.’

‘That’s ridiculous. Why would we split now? Natasha, we’ll go together.’

There was a brief pause. She gathered up her things, refusing to look at him. ‘Okay,’ she said finally, and left the room.

There were hoofprints at the far end of the ploughed field. She had tried to run across it, spying them, but a thick collar of mud, sticky and heavy, had attached itself to her boots, making all but the slowest movement impossible. Finally, she had reached the end, but after a few muddy clods on the tarmac, Boo’s trail had disappeared.

She walked for another hour, zig-zagging across the fields, wandering into copses, her voice hoarse from shouting, until she found herself in the next village. By then she was shaking, her body chilled and empty. Her shoulder ached, her stomach was gripped by hunger pangs. Cars sped past her, not noticing or not caring, occasionally sounding a horn if she ventured too close to the road.

It was as she reached the village that she saw the little row of shops. The scent of bread from the
boulangerie
was rich and comforting, completely out of reach. She thrust a chilled hand into her pocket, and came up with three coins. Euros. She couldn’t remember why they might be there: Thom had put her money in an envelope into her missing rucksack. Change. From some brief transaction the previous day. She stared at the coins, at the
boulangerie
, and then at the telephone box in the square opposite. Everything was gone: her passport, Boo’s papers, her money, Natasha’s credit card.

There was only one person who might be able to help her. She reached into her inside pocket for the photograph of Papa; it was crumpled, and she tried to straighten it with her thumbs.

She walked stiffly across the square, went into the
bar tabac
, and asked for a telephone. ‘
Tu as tombé?’
the woman behind the bar said sympathetically.

Sarah nodded, suddenly aware of her clothes, the mud. ‘
Pardonnez moi
,’ she said, checking that she had not left a trail of footprints.

The woman was staring at her face, frowning in concern. ‘
Alors, assaies-toi, chérie. Tu voudrais une boisson?
’

Sarah shook her head. ‘English,’ she said, her voice barely rising above a whisper. ‘I need to call home.’

The woman eyed the three coins in Sarah’s hand. She reached out a hand and touched the side of her face. ‘
Mais tu as mal à la tête, eh? Gérard!
’

A few seconds later a moustachioed man appeared behind the bar, clutching two bottles of a cherry-coloured syrup, which he placed on the bar. The woman muttered to him, gesturing towards Sarah.

‘Telephone,’ he said. She rose, made for the public phone, but he shook his finger. ‘
Non, non, non. Pas là. Ici.
’ She hesitated, unsure it this was safe, but decided she had little choice. He lifted the bar and shepherded her through to a dark hallway. A telephone stood on a small chest of drawers. ‘
Pour téléphoner,
’ he said. When she held out her coins, he shook his head. ‘
Ce n’est pas nécessaire.
’

Sarah tried to remember the code for England. Then she dialled.

‘Stroke Ward.’

The sound of an English voice had an unexpected effect: it made her suddenly homesick. ‘It’s Sarah Lachapelle,’ she said, her voice tight. ‘I need to speak to my grandfather.’

There was a silence. ‘Can you hold on a moment, Sarah?’

She heard murmuring, the kind that takes place when someone puts a hand over the receiver, and glanced anxiously at the clock, not wanting to cost the French couple too much money. She could see the woman through the doorway, serving someone coffee, talking animatedly. They were probably discussing her, the English girl who had fallen from her horse.

‘Sarah?’

‘John?’ She was thrown by his voice, having expected a nurse.

‘Where are you, girl?’

Sarah froze. She didn’t know what to tell him. Would Papa think it was okay to tell John where she was? Or would he want her to keep going? Telling the truth had had a habit of backfiring.

‘I need to speak to Papa,’ she said. ‘Can you put him on, please?’

‘Sarah, you need to tell me where you are. We got people looking for you.’

‘No,’ she said firmly. ‘I don’t want to talk to you. I want to talk to Papa.’

‘Sarah . . .’

‘It’s important, John. Really important. Please do this for me. Please don’t make it difficult . . .’ She was close to tears.

‘I can’t, sweetheart.’

‘You can. I spoke to him the day before yesterday. If you put the phone to his ear he can still hear what I—’

‘Sarah, girl, yo’ grandpa’s gone.’

She stared at the wall. Someone had turned on a television in the bar, and she could hear the distant roar and excited commentary of a football match. ‘Gone where?’

A long pause. ‘Sarah, baby, he’s gone.’

A new cold crept over her, flooding her from the ground up.

She shook her head.

‘No,’ she said.

‘Baby, you need to come home now. It’s time to come back.’

‘You’re lying,’ she said. Her teeth were chattering.

‘Sweetheart. I’m so sorry.’

She slammed down the phone. Her whole body was shaking, and she wanted to sit down. She sank, very quietly, to the linoleum floor and sat there, while the room travelled gently around her.

‘
Alors!
’ She was not sure how many minutes had passed, but she was dimly aware of the woman shouting for her husband, and two pairs of hands hauling her to her feet. She was walked through to the main bar, sat gently on one of the red leatherette banquettes, and then the woman was placing a steaming mug of hot chocolate in front of her and unwrapping cubes of sugar, which she stirred into it.

‘
Regardez!
’ another customer was saying. ‘
Elle est si pâle!
’

Someone else muttered something about shock. She heard them as if from a distance. She was aware of more faces, sympathetic smiles. Someone removed her riding hat and she was ashamed of her dirty hair, the mud under her fingernails. There was nothing left. Papa was gone. Boo was gone.

The woman was rubbing her hand now, encouraging her to drink the hot chocolate. She sipped politely, wondering if she might throw it up.

‘
Tu as perdu ton cheval?
’ someone was saying, and her brain felt so strange that it took her several attempts to nod.

‘
Brun
,’ she said dully. She felt weightless, heard everything at a remove. She wondered, briefly, if they stopped holding her hands, whether she might float up into the atmosphere and disappear. Why wouldn’t she? There was no one left to anchor her to the earth, no one who cared about her. There was nothing to go on to, nothing to return to. Boo was probably lying dead in a ditch like the one she had been found in. The boys might have chased him for miles. He would be stolen, crashed into, absorbed into this vast country and never seen again. And Papa . . . Papa had died while she had been gone. She would never see his hands again, never see his strong old back grooming, dipping and brushing, his jaw set with the effort. They would never sit in front of the television, commenting on the news. Nothing made sense.

She had a sudden vision of herself, a small dot, completely alone in the universe. There was no place for her now, no person, no home of her own. That sudden knowledge was so enormous she thought she might faint. Then she realised that the people were staring at her and wished they would go away. She thought, abruptly, that she might lie down on the banquette and sleep for a hundred years.

There were murmurings of concern. She felt her eyelids droop, and then the woman was pushing the mug to her lips again.

‘
C’est le secousse
,’ someone said, and actually lifted her eyelids to check.

‘I’m fine,’ she said, wondering how you could say something so patently true yet untrue at the same time.

‘Mademoiselle.’ A thin man with a cigarette was standing in front of her. ‘
Le cheval est brun?
’

Sarah looked up at him.

‘
Il est de quelle taille? Comme ça?
’ He held his hand high, close to his shoulder.

Suddenly she could focus. She nodded.

‘Come, come,’ he said. ‘Please come.’ She felt the woman’s supporting arm under her own and was suddenly grateful for it. Her legs no longer seemed to belong to her. They felt weak, like pipe-cleaners that might bend under the least pressure. She blinked, the glare of the morning light too bright after the gloom of the bar. And then the woman was climbing into the back seat of a car with her, the thin man getting into the front. They could be taking me anywhere, Sarah thought absently. She was doing everything Papa had told her not to. Somehow she couldn’t work up the energy to care.
Because Papa is gone.
She rolled the words around in her mind, but nothing happened. I cannot feel anything, she thought.

A mile or two on they were pulling into a farmyard, down a driveway littered with rusting farm machinery; huge towers of baled straw shrink-wrapped in shining black plastic. A goose hissed angrily as they got out, and the thin man shooed him away.

Then, turning the corner of a huge shed, she saw him: he was standing in a cow byre, his saddle and bridle placed neatly at the far end of the gate. ‘Boo?’ she said disbelievingly, the pain in her shoulder forgotten.

‘
Il est le vôtre?
’ the man said.

Boo whickered, as if to answer conclusively.

She barely heard him. She wrenched herself from their grasp and propelled herself towards him. She clambered over the gate and half fell into the shed, her arms around his neck, her tear-stained face pressed against his skin.

Who would have thought a girl could cry so much for a horse? they said, in the
bar tabac
, some time later, long after Sarah had been sent on her way with another hot chocolate and half a baguette inside her. She had cried solidly for thirty minutes, while she bandaged the horse’s poor bloodied knees, while she stroked him and cooed to him, and refused to leave his side. It wasn’t quite normal to see a girl so emotional about an animal.

‘Ah. You know these girls,’ the woman from the bar said, running a duster over the bottles. ‘Passionate about animals at that age. I was the same.’ She paused and nodded at her husband, who had been distracted briefly from his newspaper. ‘Still am, of course,’ she added, with a snort, and, to the laughter of the customers, made her way back into the kitchen.

Mac waited for Natasha to climb into the car before he fired the ignition. She had barely spoken to him all morning. Every time he attempted to say something, to make some reference to what had happened, she would adopt what he thought of as her marital face, showing pent-up disapproval and unspoken recrimination. It was hard to work out how to respond to it: she had wanted him last night – it wasn’t as if he had forced himself on her. Why the hell was she treating him like this?