The Giver of Stars(10)

‘Fred says you took a fall before you even got on the horse. Takes some doing.’

Alice glanced up to find Margery O’Hare looking down at her. She was atop a large, ugly-looking horse with excessively long ears, and leading a smaller brown and white pony.

‘Um – well, I –’

‘You ever rode a mule?’

‘Is that a mule?’

‘Sure is. But don’t tell him. He thinks he’s a stallion from Araby.’ Margery squinted at her from under her wide-brimmed hat. ‘You can try this little paint, Spirit. She’s feisty but she’s sure-footed as Charley here, and she don’t stop at nothing. The other girl ain’t coming.’

Alice stood up and stroked the little mare’s white nose. The horse half closed her eyes. Her lashes were half white and half brown and she gave off a sweet, meadow-grass scent. Alice was immediately taken back to summers spent riding around her grandmother’s estate in Sussex, when she was fourteen and free to escape for whole days at a time, rather than constantly being told how she should behave.

Alice, you are too impulsive.

She leaned forward and sniffed the baby-soft hair at the mare’s ears.

‘So you going to make love to her? Or you going to get on and ride?’

‘Now?’ said Alice.

‘You waiting for permission from Mrs Roosevelt? C’mon, we got ground to cover.’

Without waiting, she wheeled the mule around and Alice had to scramble aboard as the little paint horse took off after her.

For the first half-hour Margery O’Hare said little, and Alice rode silently behind, struggling to adjust to the very different style of riding. Margery wasn’t stiff-backed, heels down and chin up, like the girls she had ridden with in England. She was loose-limbed, swayed like a sapling as she steered the mule around and up and down slopes, absorbing every movement. She talked to him more often than she spoke to Alice, scolding or singing to him, occasionally turning 180 degrees in her saddle to shout behind, as if she had just remembered she had company: ‘You okay back there?’

‘Fine!’ Alice would call, trying not to wobble as the mare tried again to turn and bolt back towards the town.

‘Oh, she’s just testing you,’ said Margery, after Alice let out a yelp. ‘Once you let her know you’re in charge, she’ll be sweet as molasses.’

Alice, feeling the little mare bunch crossly under her, wasn’t convinced, but she didn’t want to complain in case Margery decided she was not up to the job. They rode through the small town, past lush fenced gardens swollen with corn, tomatoes, greens, Margery tipping her hat to those few people who passed on foot. The horse and the mule snorted and backed up briefly as a huge truck bearing timber came past, but then abruptly they were out of town and headed up a steep, narrow track. Margery pulled back a little as the track widened, so they could travel side by side.

‘So you’re the girl from England.’ She pronounced it Eng-er-land.

‘Yes.’ Alice stooped to avoid a low-hanging branch. ‘Have you been?’

Margery kept her face forward, so Alice struggled to hear her. ‘Never been further east than Lewisburg. That’s where my sister used to live.’

‘Oh, did she move?’

‘She died.’ Margery reached up to break a switch from a branch and peeled the leaves from it, dropping the reins loose on the mule’s neck.

‘I’m so sorry. Do you have other family?’

‘Had. One sister and five brothers. ’Cept there’s just me now.’

‘Do you live in Baileyville?’

‘Just a lick away. Same house I was born in.’

‘You’ve only ever lived in one place?’

‘Yup.’

‘You’re not curious?’

‘’Bout what?’

Alice shrugged. ‘I don’t know. What it would be like to go somewhere else?’

‘Why? Is it better where you come from?’

Alice thought of the crushing silence of her parents’ front room, the low squeak of the front gate, her father polishing his motor-car, whistling tunelessly through his teeth every Saturday morning, the minute rearrangements of fish forks and spoons on a carefully ironed Sunday tablecloth. She looked out at the endless green pastures, the huge mountains that rose up on either side of them. Above her a hawk wheeled and cried into the empty blue skies. ‘Possibly not.’

Margery slowed so that Alice could draw level with her. ‘Got everything I need here. I suit myself, and people generally leave me be.’ She leaned forward and stroked the mule’s neck. ‘That’s how I like it.’

Alice heard the faint barrier in her words, and was quiet. They walked the next couple of miles in silence, Alice conscious of the way the saddle was already rubbing the inside of her knees, the heat of the day settling on her bare head. Margery signalled that they would turn left through a clearing in the trees.

‘We’re going to pick up a little here. You’d best take a grip, case she spins round again.’

Alice felt the little horse shoot forward under her and they were cantering up a long flint track that gradually became more shadowed until they were in the mountains, the horses’ necks extending, their noses lowering with the effort of picking their way up the steep stony pathways between the trees. Alice breathed in the cooler air, the sweet damp scents of the forest, the path dappling with broken light in front of them, and the trees creating a cathedral canopy high above, from which birdsong trickled down. Alice leaned over the horse’s neck as they surged forward, and felt suddenly, unexpectedly happy. As they slowed she realized she was smiling broadly, without thinking about it. It was a striking sensation, like someone suddenly able to exercise a lost limb.