The Shadowy Horses

"No thanks, I'm being met." I released him with a generous tip, and settled down to wait for Adrian.

Behind me the train slid smoothly out of the station, leaving me in peaceful silence, save for the occasional soft flutter of a pigeon flapping against the sheltering roof.

This was a pretty little station, open to the air and filled with sunlight; built upon the very spot, a sign assured me, Where once had stood the Great Hall of Berwick Castle. Half-closing my eyes, I tried to imagine the place without the trains, perhaps with stained glass coloring the strong afternoon sunlight, and a few hunting dogs dozing around the still smouldering hearth. I was about to add the people, men in doublets and soft leather breeks and ladies in whispering gowns, when an all too familiar voice hauled me ruthlessly back to the present.

"Good God!" Adrian stared in horror at the mammoth suitcase. "What have you got in that?"

"I haven't the faintest idea. Alison packed it. Her way of thanking me, for letting her have the flat this summer."

He raised an eyebrow. "You're trusting your flat to a university student? That's awfully liberal of you, isn't it? All those wild parties..."

"What, Alison? Don't be daft. She'd never think to throw a wild party. In fact," I told him, grinning, "she'll very likely see to it my neighbors don't throw any, either." Alison had always been the responsible one of the family. I knew she'd keep my plants watered and my windows clean and my salt cellars filled to the exact level at which I'd left them.

"Is she still in engineering?" Adrian asked me, and I nodded.

"One more year to go. She's got a job lined up for the summer with a firm in Westminster, so the flat will be perfect for her. She won't have to waste all that time on the tube. And she'll take good care of my things."

"She seems to have sent most of them up here with you," he commented, looking down again at the suitcases.

"Oh, that's just Alison. She believes in being prepared. She'll have put an evening dress in there, and probably my winter coat..."

"Pity she didn't think to include a small pack mule," Adrian quipped, testing the weight of the biggest case. "Christ, you're sure this is only clothes?"

"Pretty sure. Why?"

"Do you have any idea how heavy it is?"

Patiently, I reminded him that I knew precisely how heavy it was. "I dragged it all around King's Cross station, on my. own. So a big strong man like you should have no problem."

"Why is it," he wanted to know, as he hoisted the case a few inches off the platform, "that women only call us big and strong when they want us to do something?''

I shrugged. "Men like lifting things. It makes them feel useful."

"Is that a fact? Then hand me that little one, as well... no, not that one, the little one. Right. The car park's this way."

In normal circumstances, it would have been a short walk up and over the tracks, and down again into the small station building, where a corner news-stand and a quiet information booth were the only diversions offered to the rail traveler. By the time we reached the car park, Adrian was breathing like a man who'd run a marathon. Shoulders heaving, he dropped my cases unceremoniously onto the pavement and sent me a murderous glance. "It's a good thing I brought this," he panted, nodding at the dark green Range Rover in front of us. "We'd never have been able to fit everything into my car."

"Does this belong to the boss, then?”

“More to the boss's granddaughter."

Lucky Fabia, I thought. I'd given up my own car ages ago. There was nowhere to garage a car where I lived, and parking in the city proved a constant headache. Easier to take the bus or the tube, and simply hire a car when needed. But I couldn't help running a covetous hand along the dashboard as I nestled into the passenger seat.

Adrian noticed, and smiled. "The advantages of being rich."

“Says the man who drives a Jaguar.''

"Yes, well." He shrugged modestly. "If I can't be rich, I might as well be stylish."

"You could always marry up. Fabia's rather young for you, perhaps, but—"

"Darling, I'm shocked," he cut me off, "that you would think I'd so much as notice another woman, now that you're here."

"Adrian."

"Yes, my love?"

"Don't be a brat."

Grinning, he buckled his safety belt and reversed neatly out of the car park.

The drive from Berwick to Eyemouth, along the motorway, took less than a quarter of an hour. Adrian tuned the radio in to a station playing something with a steady reggae beat, while I looked out the window, paying rather more attention to my thoughts than to the passing scenery.

"Doesn't David Fortune drive?" I asked suddenly, surprised to find I'd been thinking of him.

"What?"

"Well, he was on a bus when I met him, and last weekend he always seemed to be walking back and forth from town, so I just wondered ..."

"He has a little rusted Ford," said Adrian, to whom a car was a reflection of its owner's personality. "He still has teaching commitments, you know, at the university, so he's away up there most of the week, but he lets his mother have the car at weekends. Drops it off for her, usually, and then catches the bus back.”

“Oh." I thought about this. "You'd think his mother would have a car of her own, living where she does."