“Maybe you can ask them to make an exception,” Finn says.
“I don’t want them to notice me at all,” I say. If I went to the officials and made a kerfuffle over Dove, they might disqualify me anyway. My plan seems frightfully thin at the moment. All for a brother who left before either of us got up.
Finn and I both start at the sound of a car coming up the road to the house. Cars are never a good sign. Not many people on the island have them, and fewer still have a reason to come out here. Usually the only people who come this way are men who don’t take off their hats as they hand over unpaid invoices.
Finn, valiant soul that he is, vanishes, leaving me to it. The same amount of money has to be handed over regardless, but it stings less if you aren’t the one who has to count it out for them.
But it’s not a bill collector. It’s a long, elegant car the size of our kitchen, with a tall, elegant grille the size of a dustbin. It has round, friendly-looking eyeballs with chrome eyebrows; its tailpipe breathes white puffs that creep around the tires. And it is red — not the red of the horse I saw on the beach yesterday, but red like only humans can imagine. Red like candy. Red like you’d like to taste or possibly paint your lips with.
Red, Father Mooneyham often remarks sadly, like sin.
I know the car. It belongs to St. Columba’s, officially, donated to Father Mooneyham for his home visits by a well-meaning parishioner who’d come from the mainland and had some sort of spiritual conversion in the waters near Skarmouth. And it is true that Father Mooneyham travels all over the island in the car, visiting the islanders and giving last rites and first rites and in-between rites. But he never budges from the passenger seat. If he can’t find anyone willing to drive, he uses his bicycle as he did before, never mind that he’s old as sod.
I feel a little bad that Finn has hidden himself in the house, because he would’ve appreciated the grand red car of the priest. I tell myself it serves him right for being a coward.
Before I can properly wonder why Father Mooneyham has come out here, the driver’s side door opens and out steps Peg Gratton. Her feet are armored in dark green rubber boots that are unimpressed by our mud. I see Father Mooneyham fretting over something in the passenger seat, but he remains in the car. It’s Peg who has business with me, and that is a worrying thought.
“Puck,” she says. Her short hair is curled and red — not the same color red as either the car or the horse from the beach — and frazzled appealingly in a way that gives me hope for mine. “Good morning. You have a moment?”
It’s clever the way she says it, not as a question. I would have to contradict her in order to have my moment back. I make a note to use the method in the future.
“Yes,” I say, and then, though it pains me to add it, because the kitchen looks like faeries have been using it for black magic all night, “Would you like some tea?”
“I can’t keep the Father,” Peg says briskly. “He was kind enough to bring me out here.”
This of course is not true, as it was the other way around. I narrow my eyes at her. Seeing the red car reminds me both that I haven’t been to confession in a very long time and that I’ve done a great many things that I ought to confess. It’s not a comfortable feeling.
Now Peg hesitates. She looks around the yard. It is a bit pathetic looking. Every so often I pull the biggest of the weeds out from the edges of the fence and the house, but there are still dark, leafy intruders everyplace things join up. There is not much in the way of proper grass in the stretches in between, just mud. I should tell Finn to fix the wheelbarrow that has passed out in the corner of the yard. But it’s not the mess that Peg’s eyes rest on, it’s the saddle I have set over the fence, next to my brushes. And the coffee can of grain in my hand.
“My husband and I were talking about you last night, right before we went to sleep,” she says, and for some reason, this makes me feel odd, to think of her and ruddy Thomas Gratton in bed together, and to think of them talking about me, of all things. I wonder what they talk about when they aren’t talking about me. The weather, perhaps, or the price of marrow, or the way that tourists always seem to wear white shoes in the rain. I think if I had a butcher husband, that’s what I would talk to him about. Peg continues, “And he seemed to think that you weren’t riding one of the capaill uisce. I said no, that’s not possible. It’s a bad enough decision to ride in the races, without making it complicated.”
“And what did he say?”
“He said he seemed to remember,” Peg says, looking at Dove’s muddy tail, “that the Connollys had a little dun mare by the name of Dove, which I said I thought was what you had me write down on the board last night.”
I hold the coffee can of grain very still. “That’s true,” I say. “Both of those things are true.”
“That’s what I thought. So I told him I was coming down here to talk you out of it.” She looks less than pleased with this idea. I thought it was probably one of those ideas that sounded better when you were lying in bed with your ruddy husband rather than standing in the misty cold morning staring at the reality of me.
“I’m sorry that you came all this way,” I say, although I’m not, and it’s unusual for me to lie before a proper breakfast. “Because I can’t be talked out of it.”
She puts one of her hands on her hip and the other on the back of her head, crushing her curly hair flat. It’s such a fierce posture of frustration that I feel a little bad that I’m the one causing it. “Is it the money?” she asks, finally.
I’m not sure if I’m insulted or not. I mean, clearly, yes, we need the money, but I would’ve had to be the island’s best fool if I thought that I stood a chance of winning against those massive horses.
A part of me prickles at that, and I realize, guiltily, that a tiny, tiny part of me, small enough to dissolve in a teacup or work a blister in the heel of a shoe, must’ve been daydreaming of that possibility. Beating the horses that had killed my parents on a pony that I’d grown up on. I must be the island’s best fool, after all.
“It’s for personal reasons,” I say stiffly. Which is what my mother had always told me to say about things that had to do with fighting with your brothers, getting any sort of illness that had intestinal ramifications, starting your period, and money. And this decision covered two out of the four, so I thought the statement was well earned.
Peg looks at me and I can tell she’s trying to read between the lines. Finally, she says, “I don’t think you know what you’re getting into. It’s a war down there.”
I shrug, which makes me feel like Finn, which makes me wish I hadn’t done it.
“You could die.”
I can see now that she’s trying to shock me. This is the least shocking thing she could say, though.
“I have to do it,” I tell her.
Dove chooses that moment to emerge, and she is mud-stained and small and faintly damning. She comes over to the fence and tries to nibble the saddle. I give her a foul look. She’s muscled and in good shape, but in comparison to the capaill uisce I saw yesterday, she’s like a toy.
Peg sighs and gives a nod, but it’s not for me. It’s a well, at least I tried nod. She clomps back through the mud and knocks her boots on the edge of the car door to keep from getting so much filth inside the beautiful red car. I rub Dove’s nose and feel bad about disappointing fierce Peg Gratton.
After a moment, I hear my name and see that Father Mooneyham is calling me. I can’t believe that Peg would have convinced Father that me on the beach is a spiritual matter, and my path to the passenger-side window is a dutiful rather than happy one.
“Kate Connolly,” Father Mooneyham says. He’s a very long man all over, with knobs for a chin bone and his cheekbones and the end of his nose. Each knob is slightly reddened. There is a knob for his Adam’s apple, too, which I saw once when he had been knocked off his bicycle and his collar had gone askew. It was not reddened.
“Father,” I say.
He looks at me and puts his thumb in a little cross on my forehead like he used to when I was small and still spit when I was in church. “Come to confession. It’s been a long time.”
Peg and I both wait for him to say something else. But he just rolls his window back up and motions for Peg to reverse out of the yard. As they do, I see Finn’s face smashed up against the bedroom window, getting a glimpse of the splendid car as it pulls away.
CHAPTER THIRTEEN
SEAN
I stand in a round pen in the Malvern Yard with an American at my elbow, both of us watching Corr trot around us. It’s a pale blue morning that needs time to become pleasant. I was intending to spend it on the beach before everyone else got there, but Malvern caught me and pressed the buyer onto me before I could get clear. I didn’t think taking a stranger to the beach was a good idea, so I headed to the round pen to school until my visitor got bored. The rule requiring the capaill to train on the shore only counts if they’re under saddle, something I always take advantage of. There’s not much that can be done in a round pen that will prepare you for life on the beaches.
Already Corr has been going in circles at the end of the lunge line for twenty minutes. The American is enthusiastic but reverent, more awed by me, I think, than by Corr. Our accents make us cautious with each other.
“Quite a remarkable structure. This was built just for the capaill uisce?” he asks. He’s very careful with the last words, but his pronunciation is good. Coppie ooshka.
I nod. On the other side of the stables is the round pen that I exercise the sport horses in, sixteen yards across with high fence-like walls built of light metal tubing. Corr wouldn’t tolerate the metal for very long, and even if he did, everyone is too afraid to put a capall uisce in something that looks like it would blow away. So instead we’re in this fearfully wondrous pen that Malvern devised sometime before I arrived, dug eight feet into the side of a hill so that the earth makes a solid wall around it. The only entrance is a high-dirt-walled path ending at an oak door that serves as part of the pen’s wall. I like it well enough, except for when it floods.
“Capaill uisce? Capall uisce?” The American frowns now, doubting his usage.
“Capaill is plural. Capall is singular.”
“Roger. It’s never sure if it’s raining or not here, is it?” asks the American. He’s very handsome, in his late thirties, wearing a navy flat cap, a white V-neck sweater, and slacks that won’t stay that pressed for long in this humidity. The sky spits at us, but it’s not really rain. It’ll be gone before I head down to the beach with the others. “How long will you trot him out?”
Corr is already annoyed with the gait. My father once said that no water horse was meant to trot. Any horse has four natural gaits — walk, trot, canter, gallop — and there’s no reason for one to be preferable over another. But Corr would sooner gallop until he’s lathered like the surf than trot for half the time. My mother once said that I hadn’t been built to trot, either, and that’s true, too. It’s too slow to be exciting, too jolting to be comfortable. I’m perfectly content to let Corr do it on his own right now, without me on his back.
At the moment, he can tell that he’s being watched by a stranger, however, so he picks his feet up and tosses his mane just a little more than usual. I allow him his show. There are worse flaws than vanity in a horse.
The American’s still looking at me, so I reply, “Just taking the edge off. The beach will be crowded again today, and I don’t want to bring three fresh horses down there.”
“Well, he’s a beauty,” the American says. It’s meant to flatter me, and it does. He adds, “I see by your smile you already know.”
I didn’t think I was smiling, but I did already know.
“I’m George Holly, by the way,” the American says. “I’d shake your hand if it wasn’t occupied.”
“Sean Kendrick.”
“I know. You’re why I came. They said it wasn’t a race unless you were in it.”
My mouth quirks. “Malvern said you had your eye on some yearlings.”
“Well, I came for them, too.” Holly wipes the mist from his eyebrows. “But I could’ve sent my agent for them. How many times have you won?”
“Four.”
“Four! You’re the man to beat. A national treasure. Regional treasure, perhaps. Does Thisby have home rule? Why don’t you race on the mainland? Or maybe you do and I’ve missed it. We get your news slowly, you know.”
George Holly didn’t know it, but I had been to the mainland once with my father, for one of the races there. It was vests and flat caps and bowlers and canes, horses in snaffle bits and jockeys in silks and a track contained by a white rail, and wives who looked like dolls. The benevolent hills stretched gently on either side of the stands. The sun had shone, the bets had been cast, the favorite won by two lengths. We came home and I’d never gone back.
“I’m no jockey,” I say. Corr starts to come in toward us, and I push him back out to the wall with a flick of my stick.
The stick isn’t long enough to touch him, but it’s got a length of red leather fixed to the end, and it snaps to remind him of his place.
“Me neither,” Holly announces broadly, putting his hands in his pockets like a boy. He rotates on his heel as I turn, watching Corr circle around us. “Just a horse lover.”
Now that he’s said his name, I know exactly who he is. I’ve not met him before, but I know his agent, who comes over each year to import a yearling or three. Holly’s the American equivalent of Malvern, the owner of a massive breeding farm known for show jumpers and hunters, wealthy and eccentric enough to come all the way to Thisby for a chance to improve his stock. “Horse lover” is a stark understatement, albeit one that makes me like him better.