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‘You can’t be serious.’

‘I’m very serious. I’m all for crash courses.’

‘I
will
crash. I’m grown, I’m adult, not a child.’

‘Only the companion of children,’ he reminded her thinly, and by the thinness Paddy knew he was not referring to their wards but to Jerry, aged seventeen, yet she had thought ...

‘You said little by little before.’ She made a final bid for his mercy. ‘You can’t change it to a crash course.’

‘As soon as the kids go off to school and off to work,' he said relentlessly. His voice was not so clear now, and she saw that he was withdrawing from the window. ‘If you haven’t any slacks, borrow a pair of Paul’s pants.’

‘I have slacks.’

‘I’ll be waiting round the back. Best to give you your first leg-up in private. If nothing else you must admit I’m considerate in that.’

Paddy was not sure about those last words; she had withdrawn herself, withdrawn in as massive a temper as she had ever known.

‘I hate him! I won’t go! ’ She said it to her four walls, thankful now for a separate unit so that she could say things aloud.

‘I hate him. I won’t go.’

The next morning Paddy still hated him ... but she went.

Paddy
felt as much like a ride down a mountain as she felt like a sleep on a bed of nails. As a matter of fact the sleep, even on nails, sounded attractive, for she had not put the light out until the small hours, and she was tired.

Somewhere in the boys’ unit, she had reasoned last night, there must be a riding manual, for these wards had known as much about horses when they had arrived here as she knew now. Perhaps their lessons had been entirely practical, but it had seemed likely, with two of the boys already making horses their career, that some data might be around. She had felt sure there would be notes, or hints, or guides, and after giving the wards an hour to reach the second deeper phase of sleep, Paddy had tiptoed into the dorm. She had found nothing lying around, but she did ... later ... in the adjoining recreation or hobby room. She had had a moment of panic when the books were under the saddle, and the saddle, upon the books’ removal, fell noisily to the floor, but she need not have worried, the boys slept like logs.

At once she had taken the books to her room.

How To Approach Mount. She had read the chapter anxiously. She had skipped Care of, Grooming of, Health of—one of the hands would have attended to those items, but she did memorise the correct seat, the rein movements, the bodily response to the movement of the horse.

She read with interest that the cavalryman bent the leg to some extent, the Red Indian to a greater extent but that cowboys rode with a straight leg. She wondered which method was being adopted by the boys ... no…cancel that, any method of theirs would be the Magnus David speciality, of
course.
And how had he ridden? She really could not recollect, the only time she had seen him on horseback she had not seen him much, not crowded in front of him as she had been. Paddy had stiffened in humiliated memory.

She learned a jingle she considered helpful.

‘Your head and your heart keep up.

Your hands and your heels keep down.

Your knees keep close to your horse’s side.

And your elbows close to your own.’

Passing over show jumping, which included frightening things like fences, double fences, walls and water, she came back to mounting, rapport with your mount and the rhyme. Most of all the rhyme.

Tour head and your heart keep up.’ Paddy sat straight and proud.

‘Your hands and your heels keep down.’ She did this assiduously.

‘Your knees keep close to your horse’s side.’ She made the sofa the horse.

‘And your elbows close to your own.’

She read encouragingly that if this jingle was put into practice that an earnest applicant should be well on the way to becoming a rider.

On that assurance, she had at last gone to bed.

It was a bad beginning having so little sleep, but it was worse still when Magnus David met her as arranged the next morning then promptly sent her back to change.

‘Change?’ she echoed.

'That’s what I said.’

‘Change what? Shirt, slacks?’ With impudence: ‘Makeup?’

‘Change your pants,' he ordered.

'To what?’

‘To Paul’s. Paul would be your size.'

‘My size, but not my shape.'

‘I’m aware of that, Miss Travis, but the boys have been provided with riding pants, and these pants differ vastly from ordinary slacks. More seat, a very necessary thing. In which case’ ... with maddening estimation of Paddy ... ‘you need not be concerned about any difference in shape, I think.’

Angrily Paddy said: ‘What’s wrong with these slacks?'

'
Too tight in one place, too wide in another. The wide part is the legs. You’re going riding, not sallying forth in bellbottoms to brave the waves.’

‘I wish I was braving waves,' said Paddy bitterly. ‘I wish I was anywhere but here.'

‘You should have thought of that before, shouldn’t you?’

'
I
think of it?’

‘Remember September,' he said hatefully. ‘Now get changed. Pronto! ’

She had gone up and found a khaki pair of Paul’s trews that went on but made her look like a walking balloon. She came down again.

‘Satisfied?’ she demanded.

‘Yes.'

‘Well,
I
think I look awful.'

He did not argue about that, which made her feel even more awful.

'This is Donna,' he introduced, and Paddy looked at the filly he had brought and at once felt a little better. She had not put it past this man to present a large edition like his mount was, or failing that a spirited, frisky one, but Donna seemed just right.

‘Yes,
she’s reasonable,’ he agreed, reading Paddy’s thoughts. ‘How much do you know?’

‘Your head and your heart keep up ’ she began, but he nodded before she could go on.

‘I was started myself on that.’

‘Many years ago,’ she slipped in.

He looked at her sidewise. ‘How many?’

‘I already know. You told me. You were sixteen years older than Jerry.’

‘Too old?’ he asked.

'Too old for what?’

'That answers me,’ he said enigmatically. “Yes, it’s a sound jingle, especially the head and the heart being up. Is yours up ? No, never mind, get up. I presume you can mount.’

If crossed fingers could help her, Paddy knew she would mount. She approached Donna correctly, bit determinedly down on her lip, breathed hard ... and managed it.

‘Excellent,’ he praised. ‘I rather expected you to bring out a chair.’

‘As though I would!’

‘Well, I knew you’d sooner do that than accept a hitch from me.’

‘Shall we start?’ she asked haughtily.

‘Can you?’

Paddy gave Donna a reminding slap, a slap a little sharper in her indignation than she had intended, and Donna cantered off far too smartly for Paddy’s liking.

‘Serves you right.’ Magnus David had caught up with Paddy. ‘Never,
never,
mind you, vent your bad temper on your friend.’

‘Donna mightn’t be my friend,’ Paddy pointed out.

‘I think she is, though. I instinctively think you like horseflesh. I saw your face yesterday when I showed you Into the Light.’

‘Well, I was sorry as soon as I smacked her,’ Paddy admitted.

‘I could see that,' he said. ‘You were scared.’

‘But still sorry for Donna. It was your fault, picking on me.’

‘If you're to learn you’ll have to take criticism.’

‘But not downright discouragement, surely.’

‘Stop arguing and attend to what you’re doing,’ he snapped. ‘You can’t put all the onus of this ride on Donna, after all she’s already got the burden of you.’ Paddy bit down on her lip again and attended.

It wasn't at all bad now she had begun, in fact it was quite pleasant. After the initial shock of being up from the ground and moving forward still up from the ground, Paddy began to enjoy it.

They went down the track she had walked yesterday, and seen from aloft it was even more superb.

She wondered if Kip Norris would be out, and if he was whether she should recognise him. It would make it awkward after yesterday’s lie to Magnus. But there was no sign of Kip, no sign of anybody. There was the distinct presence of the neighbouring stud, though, and, remembering she was not supposed to know, Paddy asked Magnus about it.

‘What are those buildings?’ She pointed.

‘They belong to our opposition.’

‘Are there other studs up on the plateau?’

‘A few, but Standen comprises our opposition.’

‘And that’s Standen?’

‘It’s Standen.’ His lips were thinned, and he did not encourage any more of that.

‘It’s big,’ Paddy persisted.

‘Yoothamurra and Standen represent the big business, the smaller owners mostly have bloodstock only for a sideline,’ he told her.

‘You could say sideline about yourself,’ Paddy pointed out, ‘you also raise bananas.’

‘For the horses.’

‘I don’t believe you.’

‘Then begin believing. Just because an apple is the time-honoured fruit to give to a horse there’s no reason to think that a banana would be unwelcome.’

‘I’ve never seen a horse eating a banana.’

'Then you’ll see. Know anything about this oldest fruit of all?’

‘Only that it’s not the oldest.’

‘You’re thinking of Eve.’

‘Yes, I am.’

'Then Eve tempted Adam with a banana, or so they declare up here. Keep that in mind, Miss Travis, when you’re in a tempting mood.’

She let that pass, but picked him up on his statement that he only grew bananas for fodder.

‘No, you’re right,’ he agreed, ‘I make a tidy profit out of it, but of course, I grow very good bananas. It was my parents’ plantation, and after they passed on Uncle maintained it for when we ... I... could take it over.’

‘Handy that the stud and plantation were close,’ said Paddy stiffly, deeply resenting that correction from ‘we’ to T.

‘But there was never any likelihood of them not being close. The parents of both my parents and my aunt’s and uncle’s parents came here in the year dot, and once you come, you never go.’ He gave her a long oblique look.

They had left Standen behind them now and were cutting across an open field to a distinct break in the surrounding cliff edges. It looked as though it would be the beginning of a descent, and Paddy, who was doing very well now, shut her eyes a moment.

‘All right?’ he asked.

‘Yes, but ’ She nodded to where they were headed.

‘You’ll be all right, and once you get this over you’ll be an accomplished rider.’

‘I could have done without the accomplished part, just a rider would have done.’ They were very near the edge now.

‘It’s worse coming up,’ he assured her cheerfully. ‘Don’t be worried, Donna knows what it's all about.’

Donna did, and without Donna’s knowledge Paddy knew she could never have made that giddy descent.

It came upon her suddenly. From clear level pasture they dropped into a snaky track descending between impeding trees, fallen logs and slippery rock outcrops. But it was the steepness that appalled Paddy; at times she felt she would have been better off dismissing Donna and coming down by a ladder. Yet he had described it as reasonable! How perverse, how deliberately hateful, could a man get?

‘It levels out soon,’ encouraged Magnus, who had gone ahead to catch her if she fell. Already he had told her: ‘Coming back I’ll stop behind to pick up the pieces.’

It was amazing how even before the levelling out Paddy got used to it. She actually found herself looking
around. It was lovely, lush country, thick with trees hung with staghorns and wild orchid, full of sudden gorges and deep gulches, where waterfalls splayed out and smudgy shadows turned the air to a misty blue.

They were nearing the bottom now, and through the trees Paddy could see an old house.

‘Empty,’ Magnus told her. ‘There’s never been anyone living here since my parents had the plantation. The trees still thrive ... at least their children’s children do, for that’s how bananas function, the old palm has to make way for the new ... but the home is bereft. It’s mostly that way out here now, plantationers live in the town and manage their plantations from there.’

‘Yes,’ said Paddy inattentively, for her eyes were on the battalions of bananas growing up the almost vertical cliffside, rows and rows of bananas, melting away the rugged edges and clothing them instead in sparkling green, green everywhere, except where the bright blue ripening bags blossomed out like giant cornflowers.

‘Sodium, potassium, copper, all for the taking,’ said Magnus of the heavy hanging hands, ‘no wonder our horses thrive. You didn’t believe me before, did you?’ He reached out and picked a banana and presented it to Donna.

‘Unpeeled?’ asked Paddy.

‘She’s probably getting more iron like that. I don’t know, I’ve never been into it, and certainly never tried it. While I cut a swag of them to take back, you look round the house.’ He tossed her a key.

Paddy would have sooner stopped outside, the air was wonderful here, a combination of warm, enclosed valley and not-so-distant sea. But it seemed churlish to refuse. She climbed a few steps and let herself in.

The house might be empty, but it still lived. She felt that at once. The clock left on the old-fashioned mantelpiece ticked steadily, and it even muted Magnus’s steps as he silently joined her where she stood.

‘Yes,’ he said, startling her, ‘I keep it wound. Did I frighten you?’

‘No. Yes.’

He smiled at that, but not a derisive smile this time. It must be the house, Paddy thought, it must do things like this to people like Magnus.

He became silent, too, now. There seemed only the pair of them, not just here in this empty house, but in the whole world. Paddy could not have explained how she felt, except that she was waiting somehow ... Waiting? Waiting for what?