Standing Ground

by Ruth Hatfield

ruthhatfield@gmail.com

I went down to the beach again to watch the horses, Tuesday morning. They’re only there on Tuesdays and Thursdays – I don’t know where they go for the rest of the week, but I like to think it might be some steep hill somewhere, where their daily workout is a gruelling one and their nostrils stretch wide in desperation to the air. And then twice a week they come to the beach instead, where the sand is soft and the salt water bleaches their pretty white socks a gleaming chalk.

I don’t mean that I like to think they suffer, of course. But out on the beach they look so happy, so easy. Like today is a holiday for their hard, stretched muscles.

When I was young I had this one, terrible fear: that there would come a day I became too decrepit, too old, to ever ride a horse again. Even now, with that day long passed, I still hold the fear, somehow. I think this is because I’ve never managed to believe, quite, that it can never be me on one of those horses again, galloping down that beach. It’s a nonsense – to let myself go on being frightened of the prospect I might not be able to do something which I know, really, that I can’t do. But fear is fine, when it comes with dreams.

Who am I kidding? I’m eighty-two. My long history is bunched behind me like a fistful of scrunched-up newspaper.

One of the joys of being old is that I need hardly any sleep. A nap in the afternoon, and that almost does me through to the next afternoon again. I’m up before the lark’s even brushed the sleep off his beak. Hence my discovery of the horses. And what a treat they are, framed against the pale sky as sunrise creeps over the sea.

Tuesday morning they went past in their groups of two or three, as usual. I like to see them vying with each other, pretending that they’re oh so relaxed, they just happen to have a faster natural stride than the horses they’re running with. The boys and girls sit so still on their backs, letting them bowl along as sweet as they please.

Most of them, accustomed to the routine, milled around patiently waiting their turn, fretting occasionally at their reins and jangling their metal bits between yellowy teeth. And then a black one right at the back began to jack-knife high into the air like a mustang.

There wasn’t any build up, just an explosion of frenzy. He roared upwards and swung his head down, hindlegs kicking and flailing and punching out blindly. He bounced off all four legs vertically and then rocked, front to back, posting himself off the sand with huge pushes from haunches then shoulders then haunches again. Finally he twisted in mid-air like a boomerang, his shoulders came up, his head went down and he threw his jockey like a greyhound coming off a trap.

No one got near him. Black hooves struck the tide-washed beach and before a breath could be taken he was lengths away, pelting out across the sand. No relaxed gallop for him, only flight, as fast as his body would take him.

Perhaps he had seen one of the gulls. Maybe he wanted to join them.

A figure ran out to head him off and he pirouetted, swung round into a new course. Straight towards me.

“Look out! Hey!” The shout came up from the pack of waiting horses. I couldn’t see who’d said it. I was watching the black horse, straight as an arrow. So narrow from this angle, I thought. He must only be a baby. That coltish slimness, those light muscles.

“Watch out! He’s coming straight for you!”

This shout came from closer at hand, though I didn’t look round. I was mesmerised by the horse. I could hear his snorting breath. I could see his white-rimmed eyes. His coat was as slick as a seal’s and he made the ground shake under my feet exactly twice as fast as my racing heartbeat.

Eighty-two years old, I thought, and I’ve never seen anything so beautiful.

Then a dog shot forward, a golden retriever, no doubt thinking it too would like a race, bouncing up around the horse’s sweating chest and barking, which slowed him down. The frenzy drained from his legs, he’d had his play. I leaned on my stick, held out my hand towards him then curled up my fingers and put them into my pocket, as if reaching in to pull something out.

It gets them every time. You hold out your hand, they can see very well that it’s empty. But pockets – pockets are always full of tasty surprises.

He trotted briskly up to me, pleased as punch that on the whole beach he’d managed to find the one human who might have a treat for him. My fingers, sure that the pocket was entirely empty, closed around a twist of plasticky foil and I smiled at him.

“Looks like it’s your lucky day, my boy,” I told him.

Up close he was bigger than I’d thought, seeing him from afar. But then I’ve shrunk a good few inches in the last couple of decades.

A hand reached out from the direction the dog had come, just to my left, and took hold of the horse’s rein. I was glad. It takes two of my stiff old mitts to unwrap a polo mint.

“You’ve made a friend,” said a voice that creaked like a rusty crank. He was a tallish gentleman, old enough to have taken on that coat-hanger look. His well-worn jacket hung off him. Of the four of us creatures, the dog definitely had the largest muscles.

“He’s a fine lad, aren’t you, boy?” I gave the horse his mint and a quick pat. My hand wanted to stick to his wet, hot neck.

A girl ran up at speed and snatched hold of the reins, startling the colt.

“Oh, you sod!” she panted. “You little sod! That’s the third time this week. I’ve a backside like I’ve sat in a bowl of plums!”

She leapt, somehow, straight up onto his back and swung him round with an embarrassed nod at us and a mutter that might have been thanks.

We watched him go, swinging his legs in a bracing trot back across the beach.

“Know horses, do you?” the gentleman asked.

“I’ve worked with a few,” I said. Normally I might have followed it up with “in my time”. But suddenly it was my time.

“They’re down here every Tuesday and Thursday, you know,” said the gentleman, keeping an eye on his dog which was pouncing on a sand-crab.

“Yes. I always come down to watch them. I’m up at the crack of dawn these days – I don’t know, age! I think somebody’s trying to tell me something!” I laughed as the dog, too, shot off across the beach, feeling the joy of sand beneath his paws.

“Oh, I know. Life’s too short for sleeping, eh?” The gentleman chuckled, making a noise like steam bubbling from a kettle.

“That it is. Think what we’d have missed if we’d been asleep this morning.”

“A rare treat,” he observed, and we caught each other’s eye. His was shining from the salt air.

“Well, I’ll see you on Thursday, then.” I took a good hold of my stick again and prepared for the shuffle home.

The gentleman held out his arm in a crook. Another boomerang, I thought. I hadn’t been offered one of those for a long time.

“May I?” he asked.

“Of course. Thank you.”

As we turned to walk off the beach, he said, “Thursday…?”

I said, “It’s a while away, isn’t it? How about tea, instead?”

He said, “That colt. Fine animal. He was heading straight for you, you know. Top speed. You know how to stand your ground.”

And I smiled.

©2009 Ruth Hatfield

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