The Loner, page 11
“You bastard!” he cried, clenching his fists, and trying to stand straight and stare his friend in the face.
Bob, who was following Paul upstairs, retreated wondering what he had done to upset his friend. “What’s wrong, Paul?” he asked innocently.
“You bastard!” Paul repeated angrily. “It was you! You’ve stolen my blankets, sheets, and my pillow!”
It was lunch time in the college, the Monday after the Royal Iris Ball. Bob and Paul were sitting next to each other in the canteen. Bob looked listless, like a wounded animal. Paul asked him what the matter was. “You look as though you were hung over without being drunk,” he said.
“Don’t ask!” Bob replied.
“Ah, let me guess, Bob: it’s not a girl is it?” Paul was grinning.
“Shut up! I don’t want to talk about it.”
Paul would not give up. “Don’t tell me it’s the girl from the dance! Surely not!”
“It could be,” Bob conceded.
“I don’t believe it, Bob. You must be out of your mind! You were pissed out of your senses! You can’t even have started to get to know her.”
“It’s worse than that: she left without even giving me her telephone number. I’d just like to see her again – while I’m sober. I’ve been such a fool.”
Just then Paul noticed Mark join the queue at the self-service counter. “You know,” he observed. “I could have sworn that Mark over there knew your girl and her friend.”
“Really? I don’t believe it! Well, what are you waiting for? Call him over then.” He stood up and waved. “Mark, my friend,” he called loudly. “Come over here. We’ve kept a place for you.”
Mark looked pleased and surprised with his newly discovered popularity, and duly arrived, complete with plate of bacon and sausages. “W-what do you w-want?” he asked hesitantly.
“Aye, it’s good to see a friend like you. Sit down, lad, and enjoy your lunch with us. It was so good to see you at dance. Tell me, my friend: how did you like it? Fun wasn’t it?”
“I-I d-don’t know. I-I’m no good at d-dancing. N-no girl is interested in me.”
“You didn’t seem to be doing so bad,” Paul rejoined. “What about the girl who had you in her arms when the lights went out?”
Mark’s face turned bright red with embarrassment. “I-I er er,” he stammered. Then he turned to Bob and asked: “W-was it f-fun for you?”
Bob could keep up the pretence no longer. Strangely, Mark’s stammer was annoying him. “Don’t ask!” he said sharply, glaring at Mark and willing him to be silent.
Mark shrank back.
Paul laughed. “Don’t worry, Mark,” he said with a grin. “Bob’s not going to eat you! He’s got a problem: it’s called woman trouble!”
“Aye, that I have,” Bob agreed. He relaxed and continued in a more affable manner: “I’m sorry, Mark. I didn’t mean to take offence. There’s just something we’d like to know: do you remember the two girls you and I got up to dance with – right at the beginning? The one with the long curly dark hair and her blonde friend?”
Mark couldn’t remember.
“But you did know some of the girls who were at the dance, didn’t you?” Paul asked.
“Er...er...only the t-two riding school girls.”
“Ah,” said Bob, briefly recalling Sue’s love for horses. “Mark, could they have been the same girls you and I danced with?”
“I-I d-don’t know. P-possibly!”
“Do you know their names, Mark?”
Mark told Bob their names were Fiona and Sue.
“Ah Sue! That sounds like her. Was Sue the blonde, Mark?”
Mark confirmed that she was.
Bob turned to Paul. “You know, Paul, it’s such a long time since I last went riding,” he said. “I think it’s time for a refresher. I could do with a change from caves.” Then, turning to Mark, he added: “When’s your next riding lesson, Mark? Would you mind if I came along with you?”
CHAPTER 7
Riding School
The next evening, back at the hostel, Mark joined the dinner queue, to find himself once again behind the nervous solicitor’s clerk, called Tony.
“How are you, Tony,” he asked.
Tony was immaculately dressed as always, and returned Mark’s greeting with his usual smile.
But, instead of his smile yielding to a cheerful expression, there was a look of sadness in his eyes. He looked despairingly at the floor
“I-I’ve l-lost my job,” he confessed.
He ordered his breakfast, and sat down on the table which was the farthest possible from the nearest guest, as if he expected to be banished in disgrace to the most distant recess of the hostel. Mark joined him, and asked him what had happened.
“I-I did my best,” Tony explained sadly. “When I-I went to work, I-I took, the p-pill to wake me up. A-and, w-when I came back here, I--I took the p-pill to m-make me go to sleep. But I-I couldn’t c-concentrate. I-I kept getting my f-figures w-wrong. I-I w-was too s-slow. The chief clerk was very kind, but he-he s-said the firm could not afford to c-carry me. S-so I’ve been given three m-months notice.”
“What will you do now? Will you go home?” Mark enquired his curiosity, sympathy, and personal fears now thoroughly aroused.
A look of defeat and despair spread over his friend’s face: “I-I don’t know. M-my m-mother wouldn’t want m-me at h-home. I-I’ve got nowhere to go; n-nothing to do.”
“Why should I mind what my parents say? I’m eighteen aren’t I?” Fiona struck a match defiantly and lit a cigarette. “I can do what I like, Sue.”
The two riding school girls were chatting idly, while waiting for their pupils to get saddled up.
“All the same, Fiona, I bet you wouldn’t be smoking now, if your mother were around.”
“Well she’s not. So why should I care?”
“It was just that I was thinking about what we’re going to be doing, now we’ve left school.”
“I thought that was all settled, Sue; you’ll still be working as a secretary in a teaching college, and I’m at College.”
Susan did not disagree. “The only thing which isn’t settled is where we’re going to live,” she reminded her friend.
“I’ll probably stay at home, Sue. Why should I live anywhere else? I can travel into Liverpool for college any day.”
“How about sharing a flat?”
“We’ve talked about this before, Sue. I just can’t see the point. You want freedom, I know. You want to come and go as you please. But I’ve found my man. We’re in love.”
“And he’s at university somewhere in Scotland, isn’t he?”
“Yes, St. Andrews.”
“You’re a romantic, Fiona. Do you really think he’ll be so steady, now he’s away from home?”
“He adores me.” There was a starry eyed look in her eyes.
“Now he does, but you just wait and see.”
Fiona opened the cash book and started checking the money in the tin box which passed as a till. “You’ve got something in mind, Sue,” she said. “So please don’t beat around the bush. Why not spell it out?”
“I’ve found a flat, Fiona – a good one in Canning Street.”
“You mean one of those grotty run down Georgian terraces by the Cathedral?”
“A lot of them are run down, it’s true. But this flat’s been done up. It’s really nice. You’d love it, Fiona. You really would!”
“Have you booked it?”
“No. The landlord will only let to students, and I won’t be a student. It’s something to do with the law, I think. It’s easier to evict students than other tenants. So the tenancy’s got to be in the name of a student.”
“But, if I come in with you, he’ll still find you difficult to evict, won’t he?”
“He says he’ll turn a blind eye to that – if you take me in as a lodger, he won’t know about it, and the arrangement will be strictly unofficial and against the terms of the tenancy as well!”
“You mean that’s so that, if we did give him any trouble, we’d be right under his thumb?”
“Exactly!”
“So you want me to come in on this, so that you can live there! That’s just like you, Sue – real selfish!” She gave her friend a knowing smile.
“Oh very well! Perhaps I am looking after myself, but we’ve always been such good friends. It would be fun to live in the same flat.”
“What’s in it for me then?”
“Your freedom, Fiona. You can do as you like – come and go as you please. There’s no-one to stop you throwing a party when you want one. If you’d like your boy-friend to stay late, then late he stays. If you want a fag, you just light up! You’re where all the action is – as you can never be, if you stay at home in the Wirral. You’d love it! I know you would.”
Fiona carried on with her inspection of the till, pretending to concentrate on the numerous coins and bank notes, while Susan looked vacantly out of the window onto the yard, where the horses were beginning to gather. It was several minutes before Fiona replied. She nodded almost reluctantly. “O.K.,” she said. “I’ve got to leave home sometime. So it may as well be now. I’ll come in with you, Sue.”
The other girl was delighted. “Oh I am glad,” she said. “I know it’ll work out well! I really am looking forward to this now!”
Fiona checked the window. “It’s no good. We’ll have to go,” she said with a weary sigh. “They’re nearly ready. We’d better get to the barn, before the horses do. Otherwise there’ll be chaos!”
The two girls left the reception building, and hurried up an unmade track to an old converted barn. It was a wooden building, with an arched metal roof, and enclosed an area as large as a small race track collecting ring. The floor was covered with wood shavings. Fences and other equestrian equipment were set up in a simple course. An outhouse had been built against one side of the barn, and the wall between the two buildings had been taken down and replaced with a barrier. A rising tier of seats had been constructed in the outhouse to make a spectators’ gallery. At one end of the barn, there were two enormous sliding doors, which at one time had been capable of accommodating the most up-to-date farm machinery.
On arrival the two girls stood in the middle of this building, and gazed expectantly at the open doors, Susan, with a dreamy look in her eyes; and Fiona, with a degree of impatience. At length, they heard the steady beat of horses’ hooves, as their riding class slowly made their way to the riding lesson, and started to walk in a circle around the two teachers.
Susan was not relishing the lesson. “I’m not so sure about this,” she said slowly.
“Don’t be unkind,” was her friend’s reprimand. “There’s Jack Hicks; he’s one of the keen ones!”
Susan shook her head. “Yes, you can say that much in his favour,” she said. “It’s just a pity he’s not a bit more relaxed. He’s so stiff – a strip of cardboard would balance better on the shell of a tortoise!”
“And who do you think is next?” Fiona nodded discretely at an unhappy looking individual.
Her friend shrugged and laughed. “Oh! Mark Flitley!” she exclaimed. “Well at least he can stay on a horse! If only he would make the animal go where he wants to!”
“And who’s that with him? I’m sure I’ve seen him somewhere before, Sue.”
“Oh no! It’s him!” cried Sue.
“Who?”
“It’s the student who nearly raped me on Saturday night! What’s he doing here then?”
Fiona laughed: “He’s keen!” she said “– but probably not on the horses, Sue!”
They watched the riders file in. Susan closed the doors, while the ride circled the barn. Susan returned and asked Fiona who was going to take the lesson.
Fiona sensed a certain absence of enthusiasm on the part of her friend. “I suppose it’s my turn,” she said. “Please stay and help, Sue.”
The horses continued to circle. They did so without the slightest sign of enthusiasm – except Bob’s horse, which seemed to have grasped that he meant business.
Fiona decided to get the lesson moving: “Don’t just let the horses wander about on loose reins,” she called. She was holding a long circus whip – the sort which is used by lion tamers. She gave it a sharp crack. “Wake them up! Show them you’re the boss! Ride them round the school.”
Now that she had succeeded in stimulating the riders, if not the horses, Fiona instructed them to walk the horses around the barn, keeping close to the wall. “Don’t cut corners,” she cried. “Sally, keep her into the corner!” Sally was Mark’s horse – the teacher could hardly remember the names of all her clients, and had adopted the simple expedient of calling the riders by the names of their mounts. In this lesson, the girl did so out of habit, as she knew the names of her pupils only too well!
They circled the barn twice, before the tall girl judged they were sufficiently relaxed and comfortable with each other – the horses and their riders, that is – for the first stage of the lesson.
“Now, pay attention please,” she called, noting that Mark was in a dream world of his own. “We shall now do some exercises. I want you to tie your reins behind the horse’s neck, and then let go of them.”
They did as they were told. Fiona noticed how naturally Bob seemed to manage this exercise. Out of the corner of her eye, she could see Sue watching him with interest.
“Now I want you to touch both your toes with your hands,” Fiona continued in the same firm and calm voice. The riders obeyed flawlessly – except Mark. There was something about the teacher which seemed to fascinate him. He seemed to find it difficult to keep his eyes from her – and nearly slipped off the horse.
“That’s right,” she said in an approving tone. “Now, without using your arms, raise yourselves up, and lie down flat on your backs over the saddle.”
And so the exercises continued, while the horses walked around the school, as they had done so often before, in an attitude of complete boredom.
“Good! You are doing well tonight,” the girl observed. “Now we shall do the same exercises at the trot. Get your horses moving! Wake them up, I say! I said at a trot, Shadow – not at a gallop! That’s better.” A flick of the whip and the steady voice had the necessary effect.
“Good! You’ve got your horses well under control. Now then, Sally...” There was an implied threat in her voice – a threat which even a horse could understand. “I want you all to stand up in your stirrups. Take your hands off the reins – Mark, don’t lean on the horse!”
Fiona looked in vain for something to criticise about Bob’s posture, but could find nothing which required correction.
They trotted on. “And now, we’ll do the sitting trot,” was the next instruction. “That means sit down into the the saddle, Sally.” Mark turned his eyes away from her, and tried to concentrate on the horse as she reprimanded him again: “There’s no need to shake around in the saddle like a sack of potatoes! Now, I want you all to grip your saddle with your knees. Lean forward... Touch your toes.” She tried not to smile, as the riders filed past, trying hard to disguise their discomfort.
Bob showed no signs of discomfort, she thought – and – yes- Susan was trying not to look at him.
“That’s right! Now keep that position!” The more painful the command, the more inexorable it seemed. “Keep trotting! Just once more round the school! Come on!” She waved the whip slowly, and the tip chased after Mark’s horse, which was gradually reverting to walking pace.
“Good!” she exclaimed at last. “Now I want you all to take back your position for the sitting trot. That’s right, Sally.” They all looked relieved – but not for long. “Now, take your feet out of the stirrups and cross the stirrups above the horse’s neck.” Someone groaned. When they had completed this manoeuvre, the instructress continued: “Good! Now I want you all to touch your left foot with your right hand.” Fiona noticed the varying degrees of success with which they performed this exercise at the trot. “I said, touch your left foot – not the calf of your leg! That’s better! Now lie back on your horse’s back!”
Again she saw that Bob was a model of perfection.
“Good!” the girl exclaimed. “Keep trotting! Come on! That’s better! And you should all be lying back in your saddles! Who told you to take back your seats? That’s right. Now sit up and keep going at the sitting trot. Well, how are you all?”
“Fine,” said Bob, beaming at Susan.
“Very sore!” Mark admitted truthfully. The others remained silent.
“You need more practice, Mark. Now, walk your horses, and when I give the command – and not before – halt. One... Two... Three... Halt!”
They obeyed, as she continued in a tone which combined the qualities of a junior-school teacher and a regimental sergeant major: “Now then, Sally! I didn’t tell you to take your stirrups back. Put them behind the horse’s neck. That’s right. We haven’t finished the exercises yet!
“Now, before we start jumping, I want you all to canter one at a time around the outside of the barn. It’s most important that the horse leads with her inner foreleg. You tell her to lead with her inner foreleg, by squeezing your inner thigh on the girth, and your outer thigh, behind the girth. Do you all understand?”
They nodded.
“Good! Now, Jack, let’s see you canter once round the school. Start at the trot, please.”
Jack Hicks set off smartly. At the word of command, he changed from a trot to a canter, with the horse’s inner foreleg leading nicely.
“And now it’s your turn, Mark.”
It took a little persuasion to change Sally from a walk to a trot.
“Now canter!” Fiona roared at the top of her voice.
Mark squeezed, but the beast had no particular wish to canter. She preferred to trot faster instead.
