Meridon Read online

  I wished now that I had made her fear heights as I do, that I had somehow insisted that she always stay on ground level. That I had turned Robert against the idea of the trapeze as soon as he mentioned it. That I been warned by the barn owl. That I had remembered in time that the one unlucky colour in shows is always green.

  Sea suddenly wheeled sharply to the right and nearly threw me off sideways. I clutched at his neck and stared around me. For some reason, clear only to his horse’s brain, he had turned off the main track and was heading down a little lane scarcely wider than a hay wagon. I stopped and thought to turn his head back towards the main road. But he was stubborn and I was too weary to be able to bend him to my will. Besides, it mattered so little.

  I listened. I could hear the ripple of a river ahead of us in the darkness and I thought that perhaps he was thirsty and it was the noise of the clear water which was drawing him away from the road and down this little cart track. I let him go where he would, obeying my training which said that the horses must be fed and the horses must be watered. Whether you are hungry or thirsty or no. Whether you have forgotten what it feels like to want water or food. Still the horses have to be fed and watered.

  He went easily down the dark slope towards the ford where I could hear the river rippling. The singing in my head was louder, clearer. It was almost as if it were coming from the river. The night-time air blew gently down the valley and set the trees sighing with the smell of new grass. There were tall pale flowers at the riverside and they glowed in the moonlight. Sea went out into mid-river and bent his proud head and drank. The endearing sound of the sweet water sucked in by his soft lips echoed loud around the little valley. I sat still on his back and felt the cool night air caress my cheeks, as soft a touch as a lover’s hand. An owl called softly to its mate one side of the river then the other, and as I sat there in silence, in the silvery moonlight, a nightingale began to sing a few clear notes which rippled like the river and were as clear as the singing in my head.

  The trees stood back a little from the river and the banks were grassy with great clumps of primroses and sweet-scented violets. There were silver birches in a clump near a boggy patch of ground and their stiff catkins pointed spiky at the silvery sky. Sea blew out softly and when he raised his head from drinking it was so quiet that I could hear the water drip from his chin. Down river, the banks overhung the deep curves of water and there were dark standing pools where I thought one would find trout and maybe even salmon. Sea raised his head again, then lumbered awkwardly on the sandy river bed to the far side of the bank. I thought we should really turn back to the main road, but I was too desolate to think clearly about inns and stabling and a bed for the night. I let him have his head and he went smoothly and steadily on down the little track as confident as if he were going home, home to a warm stable for the night.

  I did not even check him when he turned sharply to the left, though it was obviously a private drive. I could not find it in me to care. We went past a little lodge cottage and past the high wrought-iron gates. The cottage windows were dark and the drive was soft mud. We made no noise. We rode past like a pair of ghosts, a ghost horse and a ghost rider, and I let Sea go where he wished. It was not just that I was so weary that I was dreamy with tiredness, but I also felt as if I were in the grip of one of my dreams of Wide. As if all the dreams had been leading me steadily here, till I had nothing left of my real life at all, no ties, no loves, no past, no future. All there was for me was Sea’s bobbing head and the rutted drive, the woods and the smell of violets on the night air. Sea walked carefully up the drive and his ears flickered forward as the dark bulk of a building showed itself against the lighter sky.

  It was a little square house, facing the drive, overshadowed by the trees. There were no lights showing at any of its windows, all the shutters were bolted as if it were deserted. I looked at it curiously. I felt as if the front door should have been open for me. I felt as if I should have been expected.

  I thought Sea might check and go around to the stable block but he walked past it, as steadily as if he had some destination in mind. As assured as if we belonged somewhere, instead of wandering around in circles under a pale springtime sky. His ears went forward as we went under the shadow of a great spreading chestnut tree and I smelled the flowers as fat and thick as candelabra on the tree as he broke into a trot.

  We rounded the bend of the drive and I pushed the cap back on my head a little, and leaned forward. After all these years of dreaming and hoping, of waiting and being afraid to hope, I thought I knew where I was at last. I thought I had come home. I thought this was Wide.

  The drive was right, the drive where the man I called Papa had taken the little girl up on the horse and taught her how to ride. The trees were right, the smell of the air was right, and the creamy mud beneath Sea’s hooves was right. The horse was right as well. There had been other beautiful grey hunters here before. I knew it, without knowing how I knew. Sea’s stride lengthened and his ears were forward.

  There was a great chestnut tree on the corner of the drive and I recognized it, I had seen it in my dreams for years. I knew the drive would bend around to the left, and as Sea drew level and we went around the corner I knew what I would see, and I did see it.

  The rose garden was on my left, the bushes pruned down low and the rose-beds intersected by little paths all leading to a white trellised summerhouse, a smooth-cropped paddock behind it, and behind that a dark wall of trees which were the parkland.

  On my right was the wall of the terrace. It ran around the front of the house bordered by a low parapet with a balustrade and stone plant pots with bushy heads of flowers, dark against the darkness. In the middle of the terrace was a short flight of shallow steps leading to the front door of the house. I checked Sea then; he was on his way around the house to where I knew, and he seemed to know, there was stabling and straw on the floor and hay in the manger; but I stopped him so that I could look and look at the house.

  It was a lovely house, with a smooth rounded tower at one side, overlooking the rose garden and the terrace. Set in the middle of the façade was a double front door made of some plain pale wood, with a brass knocker and a large round ring door-handle. It was as if it spoke to me with easy words of invitation, as if to say that this was my house which I had been travelling towards all the weary journeys of my life.

  There were no lights in the house, it looked deserted, but in measureless confidence I slid from Sea’s back and went stiffly up the steps and to the front door.

  Out the back, from the kitchen quarters, I heard a dog bark, insistently, anxiously. I turned around on the doorstep and looked outwards over the terrace. I looked once more at the rose garden and beyond it the paddock, and beyond that the darker shadow of the woods, and high above it all the high rolling profile of the Downs which encircle and guard my home.

  I breathed in the smell of the night air, the sweet clean smell of the wind which blows from the sea, over the clean grass of the Downs. Then I turned and put my small hand in the wide ring of the door, twisted the handle around, and leaned against the door so it slowly swung inwards and I stepped into the hall.

  The floor was wood, with dark-coloured rugs scattered on top of the polished planks. There were four doors leading off the hall and a great sweep of stairs coming down into the hall. There was a newel-post at the foot of the stairs, intricately carved. There was a smell of dried rose petals and lavender. I knew the house. I knew the hall. It was as if I had known it all my life, as if I had known it for ever.

  The dog from the kitchen at the back was barking louder and louder. Soon he would wake the household and I should be in trouble if I was found trespassing, my old boots on the new rugs. But I did not care. I did not care what became of me; not tonight, not ever again. There was a great bowl of china raised on wooden legs and I went over to it curiously. It was filled with dried rose petals and lavender seeds, sprigs of herbs, and it smelled sweet. I took up a handful and sniffe