The Shadowy Horses

"No use trying to cheer me up." He turned his face away again and sighed, raising his glass. "Ah well, maybe I'll have a rally once I get this down me."

I was truly in bad shape, I thought. I couldn't even concentrate, with him this close. Just watching the man take a simple drink, my senses went on overload. The clean soap smell of him that blended with the pungent tang of whiskey, the way the fabric of his work shirt strained against the muscles of his arm, the one dark curl that never stayed in place— I noticed all of these. And I felt the most appalling need to touch him. Deeply unprofessional, my girl, I reprimanded myself. Doesn't do to get involved with colleagues.

Still, when David shifted around to stretch full length upon the sofa, the last shreds of my judgement went completely out the window. He lay on his back with his head in my lap, quite as if it belonged there, and balanced his glass with both hands on his chest.

"Is this a rally?" I asked, looking down.

His eyes drifted closed. "I'm afraid not."

I watched him for a long while, aware of the exact moment when his heartbeat slowed, the lines of strain smoothed gently from his forehead as his breathing shifted subtly to the rhythm of a deep contented sleep.

Then, reaching down, I carefully pried what was left of the whiskey from his unresisting fingers. "Damn," I said, and drained the glass myself.

FOURTH HORSE

Something it is which thou hast lost,

Some pleasure from thine early years.

Tennyson, "In Memoriam," IV

XXVI

"Men," said David's mother, two weeks later, "are impossible creatures. They ought to be shot."

She meant Peter, of course. It had been Peter's idea that I should stop in at Saltgreens to deliver the long bulky package wrapped up in brown paper. "It's nothing breakable," he told me. "Only a few old photograph albums that Nancy was wanting."

There were four albums, actually. The old-fashioned type, with plain black paper pages bound between long covers heavily embossed and whorled with peeling imitation leather. They looked out of place here, in the modern common lounge of Saltgreens Home, the sleek pine coffee table seeming to disdain their age and well-loved shabbiness.

I put one hand out now, straightening the edges of the albums so they made a tidy stack. "Peter said you wanted them," I offered as an explanation, and heard David's mother sigh hard in the kitchenette behind me.

"Out of the cottage, I said. I just wanted them out of the cottage in case it burned down or was burgled, that's all. He didn't need to send you all this way.''

"Oh, I don't mind. I had to come into town, at any rate. We're nearly out of soap.”

“Soap?"

I nodded brightly. "Our eighteen students take eighteen showers a day, sometimes more if the work's very dirty. Peter's hired a service to supply the towels, but we can't quite keep up with the soap."

"I'd have thought they'd have brought their own."

"Well, some of them did," I replied with a shrug, "only Peter feels he ought to be taking care of little things like that. You know what he's like. He'd be doing their laundry as well, I believe, only Jeannie told him our machine wouldn't stand the strain."

"Aye, he always did like taking care of people, Peter did." I heard the reminiscent smile in her voice. "Are you sure you'll not have a biscuit? They've got nice ones this week ... chocolate cream."

"No, thanks." I turned in my armchair to watch her bustling around the narrow kitchenette.

It was a lovely place, Saltgreens—nothing at all like one expected from a council-run home for the aged. The building itself was modern and smartly designed, all fresh red brick and clever angles and gleaming polished windows. The windows here, on the second floor, showed a lovely slice of sky and sea and harbor, and the sunlight, slanting in between great hanging baskets filled with plants, danced on the gaily covered sofa backs and spilled along to warm the tiled floors.

David's mother looked completely in her element, bustling around the cupboards while she made our instant coffee.

"Is there anything I can help you with?" I asked.

"Och, it's just Nescafe, lass. I can manage that yet. The doctors," she said, as she brought the cups through to the lounge, "haven't warned me off lifting a kettle."

I did think they'd have warned her off cigarettes, though, and I couldn't help casting a questioning glance at the packet set out on the coffee table.

"They're not mine," she said, taking a seat on the overstuffed sofa opposite. "They belong to old Harry in room number three. Can't smoke in the rooms, so he leaves them out here. But he does let me help myself to the odd one, when the mood strikes." She lit one now, to demonstrate, and settled back against the cushions with an ease that denied any hint of ill health. "If I'm still on my feet, then I'm meant to be living. I'll not give up all of my pleasures."

She was a stubborn woman, I conceded with a smile. And incredibly attractive, for all she must be over seventy. In fawn-colored trousers and twin-set, she once again put me in mind of a film star who, having played the headstrong female lead in films of the forties, was aging now with equal flair and class. Small wonder that Harry in room number throe didn't mind if she pilfered his cigarettes.

"It's only the one a day," she assured me, with a confiding smile. "I always did enjoy one with my coffee. Is the instant all right for you?"