“After a fashion. It hasn’t always been easy.”
“I know.” In his look were all the years we’d spent apart, the decisions we’d made, the difficult past we didn’t need to name—all of it rolled up and pushed away like a heavy stone as he sighed once and said, “Shall we get to work then?”
—
In short order, the name Mrs. Beryl Markham began to appear in the racing columns, as a trainer and as an owner, too. That was utterly new. Clutt and I planned and schemed, building our operation by buying up the progeny of horses from the old farm at Njoro, animals that he’d overseen the beginnings of. It was a wonderful feeling to reclaim and realize seeds sown way back. There was a rightness, too, to the evenings when all our heads would cluster over the thick black studbook, dreaming of greatness, daring to predict the future: Clutt’s and Ruta’s and Mansfield’s and mine.
Every morning, even before the gallops started, I rode Messenger Boy. I went off alone with him, though this made Mansfield nervous. Messenger Boy wasn’t just any animal. He didn’t trust me yet. Anyone could see that in the bold swing of his head and in the way he glared at the grooms who dared to touch him. He knew he was a king. Who were we?
One morning, I was only across the yard before Messenger Boy spooked. Whatever it was, I never saw it, only felt the muscular tremor as he bucked, twisting sharply sideways. Even startled, I sat him, but he wouldn’t settle. I weathered three more violent twists before he sheered along the cedar-wood fencing and peeled me off forcibly. Thankfully I landed on the other side of the fence. Otherwise, he might have stamped me to death without even trying. It took four grooms to restrain him. My nose and chin streamed blood, so I left the grooms to care for him and went into the house to rinse and bandage myself. My hip ached, and I knew I’d have a massive bruise there, but it was Mansfield I really needed to worry about.
“My God, Beryl,” he said the moment he caught sight of me. “What if he’d killed you?”
“It wasn’t that bad. Really. I’ve fallen off horses all my life.”
“He’s too much of a loose cannon, that one. What if he really did hurt you? I know you want to be the one to tame him, but can that be worth the risk?”
“You think it’s pride keeping me on Messenger Boy?”
“Isn’t it?”
“This is what I’m best at. I know what he can be and how to get him there. I can see it, and I’ve no intention of giving up on him.”
“All right, but why does it have to be you? School one of the grooms, or even Ruta.”
“But it’s my work. I really can manage him, Mansfield, and I will.”
He stormed away unhappily while I finished tending to my wounds. When I returned to the barn, the grooms had Messenger Boy hobbled and tied between two thick posts. They’d hooded him and his eyes looked wild and murderous. You’ll never tame me is what they said.
I could have ordered the grooms to free him, but I did it myself instead, working to be quiet in all my movements while they looked on anxiously. My father didn’t challenge me and neither did Ruta, but they both trailed me at a distance while I returned Messenger Boy to his loose box. All the way there, the horse stamped warningly, and strained hard against the lead, and even when he was behind the stall door, he paced a tight line, whirling and glaring, challenging me. He seemed arrogant and full of hatred, but I guessed that beneath it all was sharp fear and self-protection. He didn’t want me to change him or make him something he wasn’t. He wouldn’t be coerced into giving himself away.
“You’re going to mount him again,” I heard Mansfield say. He’d been watching from the house and had come into the stable without my knowing it.
“Tomorrow I will. He’s still angry with me today.”
“Why aren’t you angry with him? Honestly, Beryl. It’s almost as if you want him to hurt you.”
“That’s absurd. I just don’t blame him for following his nature.”
“And my feelings don’t count?”
“Of course they do. But I have to get on with his training. This really is what farm life is about, Mansfield. It’s not all window dressing and pretty flowerpots.”
With that he stormed off again, and it was several days before I could convince him that I really wasn’t just being obstinate but following my nature, too—because I had to. Nothing else felt quite right.
“I didn’t think it would be so hard to watch you work,” he confessed after his mood had softened. “What about when we have children one day? Surely you’ll slow down then?”
“I don’t see why I should. It was good for me to grow up on a farm. It made me.”
“I suppose I’m more conventional than I thought,” he said.
“And more stubborn even than you warned me about.” Then I kissed him, wanting to make up.