The Slow Death of Maxwell Carrick Read online

  ‘I can never be too serious around you,’ she retorted, ‘but if you don’t want a pout, fair enough.’ I clicked the shutter and knew it would be a lovely one. Alice loved riding and I was about to go out with her for the first time in a long while, her eyes sparkled.

  ‘I’ll be back in a jiffy. You go and saddle up and I’ll be there in no time.’

  I had forgotten what it was like to stand next to a horse, to look into those deep dark unfathomable eyes, the overwhelming calmness of them. Alice was quite right; this was therapy.

  ‘Hello Jester, old man. I’ve missed you.’ I rubbed my hand up and down his broad bay face and he nudged me as if to tell me to stop being so wet.

  Alice was carrying my saddle over her arms, looking so petite behind it. I took it from her and threw it over Jester’s broad back. He eyed me as I tightened the girth and I knew he was doing his old trick of blowing out. Alice was up on her thoroughbred, Beau, in a trice, and he was walking forward disobediently whilst she tightened her girth.

  ‘Beau, behave, stand still,’ she reprimanded. Then to me, she said, ‘I’ve had a word with Jester and he says he’s going to behave very well today, being as it is your first time back in the saddle.’

  I led Jester to the mounting block. At almost seventeen hands, I needed the extra height it gave me. I gathered the reins, and when I looked up, Alice was really very jolly about it all. ‘I am so very happy to have you come out with me. I have really missed this.’

  My horse was rock solid. The old fellow knew his job, and even when Beau barged into him as we left the yard, he took the blow, staying square and solid underneath me. The trees had begun to mellow, the green leaves tipped with gold and red and, as the sunlight sparkled through them, it was all so beautiful. In front of us, magical patterns danced across roads and leaves frothed beneath our horses’ feet. It may have been autumn but the world felt renewed after the dry dirt and depression of Sicily.

  ‘I know what you are thinking,’ Alice snapped me out of my reverie.

  ‘And what would that be?’

  ‘How glad you are that I talked you into this.’

  I gave in completely and patted Jester’s deep muscular neck.

  ‘You are right, Mouse. It is the best thing I could have done.’

  ‘I’m glad,’ she said and, though I expected more from her, she held back. I felt there was something she wanted to impart to me, but I’m afraid my moods had made her feel uncertain.

  We hacked for well over four miles down the shaded lanes and, as we came back over Sarsten Hill and along the main road, Beau tiptoed around the “dig for victory” vegetable plots dug out of verges. The bird-deterring ribbons were blowing in the breeze and it unsettled him.

  We came back down the lane to the river, and I even cantered Jester along the old carriage drive, much to Alice’s delight. Jester did not cause me a minute’s concern, even as Beau shot forward in reaction to the hollow squawking of a pheasant in the undergrowth.

  We arrived back at the stable block in good spirits but, as I dismounted, the drop nearly finished off my feet. It was an intense pain, searing like lightning rods through my shins. I took a deep breath, knowing such a sharp pain was not good. The doctors had said things would improve, and I had been doing well, but the pain on landing was severe. I should not have jumped off, the mounting block was just a yard away. I held on to the stirrup leathers for a minute as the soreness rose through my thighs to my groin. It was my own stupid fault because I should have used the mounting block.

  I glanced across at Alice who was oblivious as she led Beau back to his loose box. I rested my head against Jester’s strong shoulder and took a deep breath.

  There were lights flashing, the sound of bullets, the rounds firing inside my head. Beads of sweat gathered across my brow and I leaned further into my horse, the familiar warm sweat smell of him my comfort and he stood solidly supporting me. The firecrackers in my head were so very loud. They all were shouting, screaming. One man was rolling on the floor, hands clutching the bloody mess and spillage of his torn belly.

  I pressed to the fur and rubbed my cheek into it. The neck muscle felt sure, rock solid against my forehead. He was standing still, he could have moved, but he didn’t. He knew his job, the old schoolmaster.

  He was the horse I’d been given on the morning of my twenty first birthday, my present from the Amshersts. I had hunted him, show-jumped, hacked him out more times than I can remember and now he was keeping me from keeling over. I reached up and patted him, then pushed myself away, but the world began to spin around me as I fought and tried hard to keep it all together.

  ‘Carrick, darling, what’s wrong?’

  ‘I’m fine, Alice, please just leave me alone.’ I was harsh with her and I even think I may have pushed her away. I’m not sure, I can’t remember, for the next thing I knew I was waking up in my bed and Cécile Roussell was leaning over me and telling me I would be fine, that I must rest and that things would soon be better. I knew she meant us. We were going to be fine, things would be better because we would be together, very soon.

  21

  ‘He did what? He’s an idiot!’ Steve was very angry and he was levelling the most awful stare at me.

  ‘It was all perfectly fine. He knows what he’s doing.’

  ‘Doing!’ He mimicked. ‘Doing! He took you into a derelict building, no hard hats, no regard for what might happen to you. He sounds like an idiot, don’t you dare go there again.’

  ‘Steve!’ I fought back, which was so unlike me. ‘Steve you don’t own me, I can do what I like.’

  He looked away, shaking his head in despair, then he came back at me. ‘I don’t own you, but I do worry about you. This man sounds like he doesn’t know what’s safe and what isn’t. You mustn’t go in there again. I forbid it.’

  I bit on my lip, hard, it helped me to hold back and not say what I was thinking of saying because it would have been rude. How dare he? Forbid it! Who did he think he was, my father? How could he say those things about Rory who was just being nice to me? I went into the lounge and fiddled with the stuff on the coffee table, straightening the magazines and books, but before I’d finished, I returned to the kitchen and squaring up to my very imperious husband said, ‘It’s actually up to me what I do with my time, I have lots of it now and if I want to go exploring I’m perfectly all right to do so. If it were dangerous it would have security fencing and stuff around it.’ I was just short of a foot stamp to emphasise my point, and a childish pout to boot.

  ‘Martha,’ said Steve, coughing and bending forward with the pain of it. ‘I have no problem with anything you do, but I do wish you’d be sensible. You know what you’re like; you love rooting around and exploring. It’s the journo in you; I just don’t want you to be a dead journo.’ He did have a point; my wise, sensible maths teacher husband who lived in a logical world of black and white where everything had to be safety checked. He was right.

  ‘Anyway, I’m going back to bed.’ He coughed again. ‘I feel crap.’

  I poured myself a glass of wine and went back to the lounge to watch some television but I turned it off after the news, when the soap opera theme tune began. There was nothing on worth watching. I picked up the copy of Land magazine and, finding the article about Rory, I read it all over again. Steve had every right to be pissed off with me, and he wasn’t well either.

  After we’d seen the knot garden, I had gone back with Rory to his house for a cup of tea and, ostensibly, to let Scooter out, at least that’s what I told myself. I was in a dreamlike state as I sat next to him in the front of his pickup, bathing in the glow of a lovely afternoon. He drove slowly, unlike Steve, and we took in everything around us: the low-lying sun on the rolling hills that were crowned by the Wychwood Forest; the glint of the windows of the lone farmhouse on the top road surrounded by fields and high hedges.

  ‘There is so
much out here to take your breath away,’ he said. ‘The mists in the morning towards Kingham are just beautiful, I often get up early to photograph them.’

  ‘You mentioned that in your article,’ I said.

  ‘Oh, so you’ve read it, know all about me eh?’

  ‘I did, I obtained a back copy,’ I told him. ‘It was good.’

  ‘I’ve got six copies, you should have just asked me.’

  ‘Six?’

  ‘Yeah, a couple of file copies to show clients, one for the coffee table which I keep placing on the top over and over again, and three more, one each for the kids. Not that any of them remembered to take their copy home with them.’ He sounded quite flat about that.

  ‘Tell me about them.’

  ‘There are three.’

  ‘So I gathered.’

  ‘Amy, Jason and the baby, Emily.’ He was obviously proud of them.

  ‘How old?’

  ‘Twenty, seventeen and fourteen.’

  ‘What are they doing?’

  ‘Uni, college and school, a very expensive school.’

  ‘Ouch.’

  ‘Exactly. That’s three of them now and I’m still not sure I got anything like value for money.’

  ‘And your ex?’

  ‘She’s a bit annoying.’

  ‘They all are, aren’t they?’ I said, laughing.

  ‘Yes, but she’s annoyingly happy with a new man who the kids seem to adore. He’s called Brett. Isn’t that the most annoying bloody name for the man who stole your wife?’

  ‘Yes,’ I said, fighting back a smile. ‘It is.’

  ‘It’s okay. You can laugh, if you like. I’m over it now, and plus, I’ve run out of pins.’

  ‘Effigy?’

  ‘Yes, and before you ask it didn’t work. I used to have dreams of him suddenly keeling over clutching his heart and his balls, but that never happens in real life.’

  I couldn’t help myself; I roared laughing and he joined in so that, as we pulled up at the back of The Mill House, we were both still giggling like idiots.

  He opened the front door and we both stood back whilst Scooter burst out, almost bending himself in two with his exuberance, his tail thumping against our legs.

  Rory made tea and set a match to the fire he’d laid earlier.

  The flames were soon roaring up the chimney and I was sitting on his worn leather sofa, hands wrapped around my mug. He came and sat down beside me and we watched the flames licking at the applewood logs.

  ‘My final fire of spring,’ he said. ‘I just wanted one more before it warms up.’

  I leaned back, my muscles relaxing into the leather. ‘It’s May and yet it’s so cold.’

  ‘I know, yet last week it was lovely.’

  ‘Don’t you find the seasons more unpredictable now?’ I sipped my tea.

  ‘I suspect that’s been said every year since the year dot.’

  I felt warm, suspended in a moment I could have bottled forever, like the Jim Croce song. “If I had time in a bottle…”

  ‘Tell me about your husband,’ Rory said after a while, he was relaxed and switched off.

  ‘He’s tall, has darkish hair, greying and its curly, not as much as it once was. He’s got all his hair, like you, a good amount of it.’

  ‘I’ll take that as a compliment.’

  ‘You may.’

  ‘And?’

  ‘Oh, yes, he’s very straightforward, has a dry sense of humour. He doesn’t do silly, he just doesn’t get it. And he’s terribly punctual and organised, more than me for sure. Oh, and he likes hill-walking, a bit of fishing from time to time, and the news.’

  ‘What does he do for a living?’

  ‘Maths teacher, he loves it. I can’t think of anything more boring but he maintains that maths is the most beautiful thing in the world.’

  ‘It can be,’ said Rory, surprising me. ‘It can be very beautiful, but I’m more of a trees in autumn, kingfishers, nude woman sort of a guy.’ When I looked across at him he was raising an eyebrow and then he chuckled. ‘But if maths is your thing…’

  ‘It’s not mine. I’d rather saw off an arm than do any maths. When I started out, I was a production assistant in a small publishing company in Carterton and I had to measure in points, picas and ems. I still don’t know what I was doing–’ I stopped talking, that silly memory of that first job brought me up short and, for a moment, I completely lost focus.

  Rory reached across and put his hand on mine. I flinched and almost moved mine away, but something stopped me. He squeezed my hand. It was so small under his, and so pale, given the outdoor brown of his skin. He had hair on the back of his hand, like Steve’s, but different, more dense.

  ‘Martha.’

  ‘Yes?’

  ‘Find something that makes you happy.’ I felt a knot rise in my throat and the sudden irrational feeing that I wanted to cry. ‘Don’t stay lost like this, find your truth.’

  I wanted to turn and face him, to search in his eyes for the answers, but the prim and proper Martha took over. She leaned forward and placed her cup on the low coffee table then stood up. ‘I think you’d better take me home,’ I heard her say.

  22

  I could hear low voices: Alice and then a French accent, then Alice again.

  ‘He’s… the doctors said… long time…’

  I strained to hear, without moving, so that I did not attract attention.

  ‘Very difficult for you… will he never be able to…’ It was her voice, more lovely for the softness in it.

  ‘Cécile?’ My voice was shredded, rasping, my mouth dry, and Alice was there immediately gently lifting my head and raising a glass of water to my lips.

  ‘Cécile?’ She was tender and caring as she let me sink back into the pillow.

  ‘My darling, she is not here but she will be back soon, she and George have gone for a walk.’

  I felt the wave of warmth overcome me, the need to sleep. Alice’s fingers were on my forehead, cool. Her lips were moving, but I wasn’t hearing anything. Then she was Cécile again, the refined features, the dark brown eyes, hazel, no not hazel, emerald. I sank into sleep and dreamed that I was back on Jester.

  The sun was high, we were riding together kicking the horses on across bright green meadows and through sunlit groves and she was there, on Beau, Cécile, her hair streaming behind her as we galloped.

  When I awoke again my room was empty, a half haze coming from the windows, the drapes not yet drawn. There were no lights on and no sound so, just for a minute or two, my mind had to adjust to where I was. I ran my hand over the cotton sheets and grasped the silk eiderdown. I was at home, at Lapston, I was safe. I flung back the covers and went to the mirror but what I saw made my stomach lurch. The man in the reflection was old and drawn, his skull visible under the skin, eyes bloodshot. I shook my head but he wouldn’t go. He was staring at me with incredulity and a sense of horror too.

  I went to my bathroom and switched on my shaving light. He was still there, grey and pathetic. I cleaned my teeth and washed my face, slicking back my hair with Brylcreem. As I stepped back, I thought I looked a little better but it was not a huge improvement; my eyes were still bloodshot. I changed into a fresh shirt and tie wondering who had undressed me and put me in bed – Grant more than likely.

  The hall was dimly lit as if the whole house was playing dead to help me sleep. A crack of light from the library stretched across the tiled floor, and from somewhere I could hear muffled voices. I began my descent down the stairs, hearing the voices that were clearly coming from the direction of the lounge. Then Grant came out of the double doors, carrying a platter atop his fingers. He didn’t see me, and I watched as he swept past to the kitchens.

  As I stood outside the door, waiting for the moment when I should enter and not break rudely int
o the conversation, I heard George saying; ‘Should I wake him?’

  There was a short break before Alice replied, ‘No, sleep will help him. Mummy always said if you need sleep your body will ask for it.’

  Cécile spoke. ‘It is so distressing to think that such a lovely man is suffering like that. I wonder how many more are the same?’

  ‘Unfortunately it can’t be helped, but it’s over now and we must battle on. After all, we none of us have come through unscathed.’ That was George.

  ‘How is your hip now?’ Alice asked.

  ‘Oh no trouble, no trouble,’ her brother replied. ‘Been through a lot worse at school.’ There was a chortle between Alice and George, then I heard George explaining our private school system to Cécile.

  I stepped out of the shadows and into the room, which seemed extraordinarily bright. They all stood up as I entered, and Alice put her glass down and came toward me. She kissed me and drew me in. ‘Carrick, I am so pleased to see you up. You’ve been asleep for hours, since you–’

  ‘Yes, yes, Alice, thank you. I believe I must thank you too, Madame?’

  Cécile looked a little surprised, but she nodded and smiled.

  ‘Good to have you back, old boy.’ George clapped me on the back. ‘Sherry?’

  ‘Yes please,’ I said and, as we took our seats, Alice patted the place next to her and I knew what she was indicating, but I chose instead to sit beside Cécile.

  ‘Are you feeling better?’ Alice asked.

  I informed her that I was. ‘I should imagine all that exercise was too much, too soon.’

  ‘That’s what the doctor said, take it more slowly.’ George handed me my drink. ‘It doesn’t do to go against medical advice, old man.’

  I was irritated that they were talking about it because a man’s health is, after all, his own affair. ‘What time is it? I can’t find my watch?’

  ‘Oh, it is here.’ Cécile stood up and moved across to an occasional table. ‘Ogden brought it in. You must have dropped it on the lawn. We are lucky to have him.’