Blind Beauty Read online

  Being small for her age was a bonus. Also the fact that she was delivered to school by a chauffeur (George) in a smart car. This was toffee-nosed in the extreme and tempted Jackie into her first derogatory remark.

  “School bus not good enough for you, eh? Us rough lot?”

  Tessa looked up at her, satisfied with what she saw: a stupid face, vicious, jealous eyes. Jackie had the build of a coal-heaver, but none of the amiability of many overlarge people. She was very greedy, and bullied for bars of chocolate out of lunchboxes, and crisps and biscuits, as well as pocket money. “Or else –” Her build stood her in good stead, like a bouncer. Nobody stood up to her, not even the teachers, because of her father. Tessa, noting all this, felt an old surge of excitement. This was what she was good at. She bided a day or two, until the time was ripe.

  At lunchtime in the dining room the pupils with lunchboxes sat at one end, screaming and squabbling and flinging bits of food. Tessa sat alone. She had a lunchbox and a second covered plate. She watched Jackie do her usual swiping of the best bits of other people’s lunch and waited until her turn came. Jackie never missed her out, because she had no friends to protect her.

  “What’s in there then?”

  For once Tessa replied. “Want to see?”

  “Yeah, I might like it.”

  Tessa had chosen well. She whipped off the cover, picked up the dish and splodged a thick custard trifle square into Jackie’s face. It was full of cream and jam, one of Mrs Tims’ best, and Tessa ground it well in, and up into the girl’s greasy hair for good measure, leaving the foil dish sitting askew on the top of her head.

  Uproar ensued – glee and wild shrieking from the oppressed, and immediate retaliation from Jackie’s gang. Tessa was prepared for this too. As they came at her, she turned and snatched a knife out of her schoolbag – another of Mrs Tims’ useful accessories – and faced the oncomers with it raised and ready.

  They stopped in their tracks, gasping. This brand of violence was something altogether different, far more shocking than the trifle. The uproar turned suddenly to silence. A white-faced teacher teetered on the edge of the crowd.

  “Tessa, dear, is that wise?” she bleated into the hush.

  Tessa shrugged. She was enjoying herself for once, but the object of her action was achieved. She had no need of any more. Jackie’s father would see to the rest.

  Which was how it turned out.

  “I have no alternative but to suspend you,” Mrs Alston said to her sadly. “I suspect you did it entirely for that reason.”

  “I wasn’t going to use the knife, only stop them doing me over. I knew what would happen when I sloshed Jackie.”

  Mrs Alston was far too astute for her comfort. For all her grim demeanour, she was someone Tessa wanted to think kindly of her. A bit like Jimmy. She could not fathom why. Most people she totally despised.

  “I know Jackie’s a bully – I shall sort that out. But it wasn’t the bullying, was it? You want to leave?”

  “Yes.”

  “Why?”

  Tessa did not reply. She wanted to tell her, but couldn’t.

  “You have such a strong character. You ought to channel that strength into something worthwhile.”

  Tessa wanted to cry out, Yes! Yes! I am, that’s why! But she did not know how to make contact. There was nothing Mrs Alston could do for her, save let her go.

  She went. Her mother cried. Maurice locked her in her room for a couple of days, while he remembered, then he went away and Tessa was back at Sparrows Wyck the same day. She ran all the way, sobbing for breath, for happiness, for fear… Wisbey – Wisbey had her job! She would kill him! Her breath made clouds on the cold autumn air, the grass was crisp underfoot. The chestnut trees in front of the farm were weeping great swags of brown leaves and conkers bright as horses’ hides. The freedom gave her wings.

  The horses had been ridden out. A boy was unsaddling Buffoon in the yard, a bounding Walter getting in his way. Gilly and Sarah were rubbing down Gossamer and God Almighty. Walter leapt up at Tessa, frenzied with joy at seeing her again.

  Tessa pushed him away, flung her arms round Buffoon’s neck and buried her burning face in his mane.

  “Gerroff my horse!” Wisbey cried. “Who’s this maniac?”

  Tessa could hear the others laughing. Walter leapt up again. Wisbey shouted at him. But Buffoon nuzzled Tessa’s face.

  “He remembers me! He knows me!” she whispered. She turned glowing eyes out of the lovely smell and tickle of Buffoon’s neck, and saw Wisbey’s outraged red face. He hit her with his body brush on the side of her head, knocking her backwards. She fell over the water bucket and Walter leapt on her prone figure, covering her face with wet licks.

  Sarah tried to keep order, but couldn’t stop laughing.

  “You two idiots! Behave like human beings, for God’s sake! Wisbey, this is Tessa – you’ve heard of her. You have to make allowances – she’s mad. Tessa, shake hands with Wisbey. He looks after Buffoon beautifully. You should be pleased.”

  “Buffoon is mine!”

  “How come you’re not at school?”

  “I’ve been suspended. I can’t go.”

  Tessa got up and faced Wisbey warily. He scowled at her. He was an untidy youth with spots and reddish hair like a brush, a scalping in decline. He was built like a small tank, his eyes were like guns.

  “Yeah, I’ve heard of her,” he admitted. “Didn’t believe it.”

  “I’m back,” Tessa said. “I can do Buffoon again.”

  Sarah said, “It’s not as easy as that. We’ll talk about it.”

  “He’s mine.”

  “Actually he belongs to a Mr Claude Cressington, Tessa, and he is in the charge of our guv’nor, Mr Peter Fellowes. It’s not for you to say, I’m afraid. Wisbey might let you muck him out, mind you.”

  Sarah’s voice made it plain she was not to be argued with. She saw Tessa’s expression and added, “Later, Tessa. Not now. You can clean his tack.”

  In the tack-room Tessa tried to keep her counsel when the others came in and put the kettle on. She remembered she did not show anything, but things were getting out of hand lately. They tried to make her say why she had been thrown out of school again but she would not be drawn. Jimmy came in while this conversation was going on and looked at her and said, “Her way of coming back here, I reckon. Eh, Tessa?”

  She would not admit it, even to Jimmy.

  “Going to keep up your lessons – the ones that matter?”

  “Oh yes! Yes please!”

  “Good.”

  Tessa could not remember feeling so happy as she did at that moment, not since Declan and Shiner. She loved Jimmy – like Buffoon… it was all too much for her. She had to go out. She could not cope.

  “What did she do, to get thrown out again?” Jimmy asked the tack-room.

  Gilly, who knew all the local gossip, said, “She drew a knife on Jackie Barstow.”

  Wisbey’s eyes widened.

  “A knife! Blimey! You didn’t say she was dangerous! Only mad.”

  “She’s dangerous if she doesn’t get what she wants,” Sarah said.

  Jimmy said to Sarah, “Give her Buffoon. She’s got nothing else in this life.”

  “But to be so besotted – it’s dangerous – what will she do when he goes?”

  “For now. She’ll grow up eventually.”

  “Yeah, go on,” said Gilly. “Wisbey doesn’t want him – remember what he said when he saw him? Bloody cab-horse, he said. He only likes him now because he’s so easy to do. Give him something worthy of his talents!”

  Sarah said, “He can have God Almighty.”

  “You’re joking?” Wisbey was uncertain.

  “No, I mean it. He’ll give you something to think about.”

  Wisbey’s eyes shone. “I thought he was yours
?”

  “I’m Head Lad, remember. I don’t ‘do’ horses.”

  “You could have fooled me,” Gilly said.

  They all laughed.

  So Tessa got her wish, Wisbey got his heart’s desire in God Almighty and Sarah took over a new horse called Catbells. There were now fifteen horses in the stable, a few new ones and the ones that had been having a summer holiday. The others did three each and Tessa was given Buffoon and a gelding everyone called the Littlun, because he was scarcely fifteen and a half hands high. He was ponyish in his ways, quick and agile, and quite different to ride from the ponderous Buffoon. In fact, as Tessa’s expertise grew, she enjoyed her exercise on the Littlun because he wasn’t such hard work as Buffoon, he was so eager and keen to go. For all his hard food and new fitness, Buffoon was still like a double-decker bus, slowing down at every opportunity.

  The others all ribbed Tessa over Buffoon, but she learned to take it. She did not answer back, but her silences were no longer what Gilly had described as “evil”. Inside she smiled to herself. Nothing could budge her trust in him.

  To her, he was a great horse.

  Peter got worried because he was employing a twelve-year-old child and could get taken to court. Tessa refused to be paid, so said there was no problem.

  “You won’t be able to stay – it’s only temporary, until you get yourself an education,” Peter said, to allay his own fears.

  But Tessa said, “I will stay.”

  She knew now that there was no school that would take her, not after the knife. Jackie’s father tried to involve the police over the knife, but Mrs Alston refused to co-operate with them. It was an in-house situation, she said. If Mr Barstow didn’t like it he could withdraw Jackie. She arranged for Tessa to have private tuition at home. As this was only a few hours a week, and in the afternoons, it did not interfere with Tessa’s stable life. The tutor was a hardened, retired battleaxe, of which sex Tessa found it hard to determine, but as Tessa was so happy with the way her plans had succeeded she worked with a will and made no trouble. So much so that the battleaxe told Mrs Alston that she ought to be reinstated, there was nothing wrong with her attitude.

  “There will be, if she comes back,” Mrs Alston said. “What does she do in her spare time, I’d like to know?”

  “I don’t know, but she smells of manure.”

  “Strange. Leave her be,” said Mrs Alston.

  “She’s a clever girl.”

  “I know that.”

  And Mrs Alston laughed.

  The walking and trotting days were now changing into canter and work. Peter would start racing his horses at the end of October and they needed to be fit and strong. They had to be tried out on the gallops to test their stamina and speed.

  Peter said, “Is Tessa ready to ride real work?”

  “Oh, she’ll come to no harm on that bus Buffoon,” they all said. “Humour the girl.”

  Tessa was used to cantering Buffoon. It felt like being on a garden swing, backwards and forwards, flump, flump, the long red ears wagging at the end of the long scruffy neck. However many oats disappeared into his belly, Buffoon was always gaunt, his hip-bones sticking out like an advertisement for a horse charity. Tessa called him her beauty. They all laughed. Greevy was incredulous that Peter kept such a nag in his stables. Tessa could not rebut his criticism, as it was the same she heard every day – only kindlier and jokier – in her own yard. But nothing budged her devotion. Only with Greevy, it hurt. Maurice owned the Raleigh stable star, the horse called Crowsnest. It was black as a winter night and as strikingly handsome as Buffoon was ugly. He was a horse everyone turned to admire. Even Tessa could not help catching her breath when he came towards them up the gallops, the silk-smooth coat rippling over shoulders that worked like pistons, raking out over the autumn turf. The racing press hyped him and earmarked him for the Champion Hurdle, the great race in March at the Cheltenham Festival. This is the meeting when the best meet the best, after the winter’s jousting.

  Greevy was confident.

  “You wait. He’s a winner. Dad’s going to make a pile.”

  The first prize was in six figures.

  “You’ll be there one day, Buffoon,” Tessa said to the horse as she groomed him. “You’ll beat that Crowsnest, I know you will.”

  Not in the Champion Hurdle, perhaps – Tessa thought big: more like the Gold Cup or the Grand National.

  There was no one to listen to her rubbish, only the amiable horse who flicked a long ear back at her. Tessa knew he trusted her now. She trusted him too. She always talked to him, although she still said little outside his box.

  When Peter said she could ride him in his first real gallop, she was not afraid.

  “Of course not,” she said scornfully, when he suggested she might prefer Wisbey or Gilly to take him.

  “You’ve got to roust him up – I want to see what he can do. He can go with God Almighty and Gossamer, the three of you, and I want you to try and stay with them. He won’t, of course, but do your best.”

  “God, he’s slow,” Wisbey grumbled. “He’ll only just have started when we’ve finished.”

  It was a wet, mizzling day, not cold. They rode out in a line, hunched into anoraks. Peter had gone ahead in his Land Rover to the top of the gallops. He had taken care to time it so that there were no Raleigh horses about. One did not want the serious tests to be remarked by rival stables. Tessa tried to keep Buffoon alongside God Almighty, where Wisbey sat with his smug, superior expression, secure in his faith that he rode the best. God Almighty had won some good races, and was expected to win more. He was the only half-decent horse in the stables.

  “I’ll see you right,” he said to Tessa. “Just track me. Don’t be afraid.”

  He was trying to be encouraging.

  Tessa thought patronizing.

  She did not reply. Her face was set and determined as she pulled up at the bottom of the gallop. They lined up together under Sarah’s fierce eye, the three of them, with Gilly on Gossamer.

  “You go like it’s a race, Tessa – go for it. See what the old boy can do. When I drop my hand.”

  There was no wait, they were away. Tessa saw God Almighty and Gossamer galvanize ahead of her, their great muscly hind-quarters powering them up into the rain, throwing gouts of mud back into her face. Buffoon launched himself like a ship into a head sea, wanting to please, following his friends. Tessa fought for her balance, pulled herself up with a handful of mane and crouched low over the mountainous withers. Her ship was under way. But in no great hurry. The gap between him and his friends widened.

  “Buffoon, show them, you idiot! You’re Shiner’s boy, not a cab-horse. Do it for me, Buffoon, go!”

  An ear twitched back. She knew his mind – what, go? Why? I’m happy here…

  “Buffoon – go! Show them! Show them! I know you can!”

  She was batty, and knew it, feeling the adrenalin running, the rain in her face, the great warm smell of the horse in her nostrils, the sound of hooves on the downland turf. Mud splattered her. The jockeys in front were always clean, she remembered, clean and smiling… I want to be in front…

  Slowly, slowly, the message communicated.

  The hill steepened. Buffoon’s stride lengthened, the stride he didn’t know he’d got. Nobody had told him, before now, what he was for. All that good food and built-up muscle… why? The idea of it trickled into him as he felt the mad little ant on his back communicating messages of glory.

  And Tessa knew he understood. Whatever else he wasn’t, her horse was intelligent. Nobody had ever doubted that. Perhaps too clever to be a good racehorse, they said in the yard. (After all, no one could make a horse try if he didn’t want to, not even the best jockey in the world. And why should he? All that effort and pain and only the whip for reward, to go even faster. Clever horses said, Not me, sonny boy.) But Buffoon liked to pl
ease, and Tessa was his special mate, and now he found his legs were doing extraordinary things, eating up the ground, raking out farther than ever before, and the other horses’ tails were in his face suddenly, and they were holding him up.

  As Tessa went past she had a glimpse of Wisbey’s face and heard his shout shredded on the wind – rude, anxious expletives. She knew God Almighty was flat out, for they were breasting the last furlong where Peter waited beside his Land Rover, and at the top they must pull up.

  But by the time they passed the Land Rover Buffoon was five lengths clear and still travelling. Tessa just sat there, all her strength drained away holding on to that power. She was like a rag, crying, and still powering on.

  “Buffy, please!”

  Her full weight on his mouth meant nothing to him. But her anxiety seemed to suggest something… what, he wasn’t sure of… He was so enjoying it, his heart bursting with the feel of his own power, but the message on top had changed. He could feel something negative up there, he wasn’t pleasing her any more.

  Kindly, he dropped the bit. The fizz went out of him and he came back to a hard canter, blowing out great snorting breaths into the rain. Tessa couldn’t see for mud and rain and tears… tears of what? Fright, perhaps, but more a hysterical jubilation at what had happened. He can do it! was exploding in her brain! After all they said… cab-horse… my darling beautiful Buffoon!

  She wiped her face hastily. She was miles away from the others and had to walk back, it seemed for ever. Would Peter be angry? She didn’t know what to expect, feeling limp now as a woollen toy, her knees trembling. Buffoon stretched out his neck, shaking his long ears, quiet as a child’s first pony. The rain and sweat shone like oil on his great shoulders. Tessa could feel the rain creeping down her neck.