I’m sorry for what happened to Carey.
One minute I was telling her to stop being such a smart mouth, and the next she was telling me his dog’s name…and next minute (even though more than a year had passed) there were all those people in the church. I was standing in the crowd in the doorway, and saw you at the back with your brothers.
For a moment I nearly came to you. I regret now that I didn’t.
When I met you both, I should have told you—that you reminded me of Michael and me. I could see by the way you were near each other, you were only an arm’s length away. You would save each other from me, or from anything else that might harm her. You looked so devastated in that church. I hope you’re doing okay.
I won’t ask where your mother was, or your father, because I know what we keep to ourselves, especially withheld from our parents.
Don’t feel like you need to reply.
I won’t tell you to live how she’d want you to, but maybe to live how you have to.
But you do, I think, have to live.
I’m sorry if I’ve spoken out of turn here, so please forgive me if I have.
Sincerely,
Abbey Hanley
It came a few days after Bernborough, when he’d stood on the track till sunrise. The letter was hand-delivered. No stamp and no address. Just Clay Dunbar and left in the letterbox.
* * *
—
A week later, he walked through the racing quarter, and the city, until he reached her. He refused to use the buzzer. He waited for another resident; he slipped through the entrance behind him, and took the lift to the eighteenth floor.
He balked when he reached her door, and took several minutes to knock, and even then he’d done it benignly. He was shocked when she came to open it.
Like before she was kind and immaculate, but quickly overrun with concern. Her hair, and this light, they were lethal.
“Clay?” she said, and stepped closer. She was beautiful even when sad. “God, Clay, you look so thin.”
It took all of his will not to hug her again, to be held in the warmth of her doorway—but he didn’t, he couldn’t allow himself. He could talk to her and that was all.
“I’ll do what you said in your letter,” he said. “I’ll live the way I have to—I’ll go out and finish the bridge.”
His voice was as dry as the riverbed, and Abbey had done things well. She didn’t ask what he meant by the bridge, or for anything else he might tell her.
He’d opened his mouth to speak again, but then wavered, and welled in the eyes. In fury, he wiped the tears away—and Abbey Hanley took a risk, and a gamble; she bet double and to hell with the worry, or her place in this whole mess, or what was right. She did what she’d done once before: She kissed a pair of her fingers, but placed them across, on his cheek.
He wanted to tell her about Penny then, and Michael, and all that had happened to all of us—and all that had happened to him. Yes, he wanted to tell her everything, but this time he just shook her hand; then caught the lift and ran.
And so, once again, it was.
After he’d met Abbey Hanley with Carey, and she’d torn the first page of The Quarryman out, they could never know what it would mean. At first it was one more yardstick; the start of another beginning, as months flowed in and by them.
In spring, they both came back:
Matador and Queen of Hearts.
In summer, the ache of waiting, given Carey had been forewarned: She would have to cut the dead wood out, and Clay would make her commit. Clay would make a plan.
* * *
—
In between, as you might guess, the one constant—the thing they loved most—was the book of Michelangelo, whom she lovingly called the sculptor, or the artist, or his favorite: the fourth Buonarroti.
They lay down at The Surrounds.
They read there, chapter for chapter.
They brought flashlights, and batteries for backup.
To protect the fading mattress, she brought a giant sheet of plastic, and when they left they made the bed with it, they tucked the whole thing in. Walking home, she’d link her arm through. Their hips would touch between them.
* * *
—
By November, history was repeated.
Queen of Hearts was just too good.
Matador tried his heart out, when they’d raced twice more and he’d faded. But there was one chance still to come; a final Group One was to be run in the city, early December, and Ennis McAndrew was building him. He’d said he’d faded because he still wasn’t ready; this was the one he wanted. It had a strange name—not a plate or guineas, a cup or a stakes—but a race called the Saint Anne’s Parade. It would be Matador’s last ever run. Race Five at Royal Hennessey. December 11.
* * *
—
On the day, they did what she liked to do.
They put a dollar on Matador in the fifth.
She asked an arse-scratcher to put the money on.
He did it but told them, laughingly: “You know he’s got bloody no hope, don’tcha? He’s up against Queen of Hearts.”
“So?”
“So he’s never going to win.”
“They said that about Kingston Town.”
“Matador’s no Kingston Town.”
But now she beat him up a bit. “What am I even talkin’ to you for? How many wins have you had lately?”
He laughed again. “Not many.” He ran a hand down his cheekfuls of whiskers.
“That’s what I thought. You’re not even sharp enough to lie about it. But, hey”—she grinned—“thanks for putting the bet on, okay?”
“Sure,” and when they went their separate ways, he called out to them one more time. “Hey, I think you might have convinced me!”
* * *
—
The crowd that afternoon was the biggest they’d ever seen, for Queen of Hearts was also leaving, for a stint running overseas.
There was almost no room in the grandstand, but they found two seats, and watched Petey Simms, doing laps with the horse in the mounting yard. McAndrew, of course, looked pissed off. But that meant business as usual.
Before the jump, she held his hand.
He looked outwards, he said, “Good luck.”
She gave him a squeeze, then released it—for when the horses left the barriers that day, the crowd was on its feet; people screamed, and something changed.
The horses hit the turn, it was wrong.
When Queen of Hearts surged forward, Matador, black and gold, went stride for stride, beside her—which was really saying something, because her strides were so much bigger. When she accelerated, he somehow went with her.
The grandstand shade became desperate.
They called raucously, near-terror, for the Queen—for it couldn’t be, it couldn’t.
But it was.
When they hit the line, it came down to their bobbing heads.
It looked like Matador got it, and it sounded that way, too—for a hush blew over the crowd.
She looked at him.
She held him, single-handed.
Her freckles nearly exploded.
He won.
She thought it but didn’t speak, and it was lucky she didn’t, too, because it was the greatest run they’d ever seen, or been part of in the stands, and there was a poetry, they knew, to the thought of it.
So close, so close, then gone.
The photo somehow proved it:
Queen of Hearts won by her nostrils.
* * *
—
“Her nostrils, her fucking nostrils!” called Petey afterwards, in the confines of the stalls—but this time McAndrew was smiling.
When he saw Carey so hurt and dejected, he came over and took a look at her. Almost an examination. She thought he might check her feet.
“And what the hell happened to you? The horse is still alive, isn’t he?”
“He should have won.”
“Should’ve nothing—it was something we’ve never seen, a run like that,” and now he made her look at him, in the hard blue eyes of a scarecrow. “That, and you’ll get that Group One for him one day, okay?”
The beginnings of a kind of happiness.
“Okay, Mr. McAndrew.”
* * *
—
From there, Carey Novac, the girl from Gallery Road, would start her apprenticeship in earnest. She started on January 1.
She’d be essentially working round the clock now.