Swimming with Horses Read online

  “Morning!” Tiff called out. “Morning all!”

  A minute later, we were off.

  I didn’t see much of Hilary Anson the rest of that day, or what I did see was from a distance. She was serving as the whipper-in and was constantly busy, working the hounds up ahead, along with Tiff McDermott. As usual, Colonel Barker acted as the field master, keeping the other riders together and out of Tiff’s way.

  Several times that morning, some sudden movement would catch my eye. From somewhere off to one side, I would see that big chestnut of Colonel Barker’s sailing into view with Hilary Anson aboard. They’d fly over another wall of fieldstones topped by split rails, she with just one hand on the reins. In the other, she brandished her hunting whip. The instant Club Soda landed, she peeled him off and away. “Get on to him!” she cried out in a glottal, singsong warble. “Get on to him!” As whipper-in, it was her job to keep those maniac cub hounds in order.

  Stiff-backed and stately on his noble black mare, Tiff McDermott trotted ahead in the distance, surrounded by the gambolling hounds. He chirped out short blasts on his horn.

  It is no exaggeration to say that the ensuing months of that long-ago summer have determined the course of my life ever since. Sam Mitchell’s my name, and here I am — a twice-divorced English professor, childless, tottering on my game hip through a cavernous house, sparsely furnished, on a narrow one-way street in Syracuse.

  I sometimes wish I could refashion those three summer months into an endless loop that would play on forever. Hilary, Hilary, Hilary. But I can’t. The summer ended, and she disappeared like Cinderella at the stroke of midnight.

  Except, of course, she was no Cinderella — God knows she was not — unless your idea of Cinderella is a sexually abused teenage girl with masochistic tendencies who smokes, drinks, swears, and leads men astray by the dozen, married or single, while also packing a gun. She rode like an angel, though, if angels could ride. That’s one thing I learned from her, for all the good it ever did me. I haven’t sat a horse in thirty years, not since that summer at age fifteen, when I fell in love with Hilary Anson.

  That summer is the reason I finally lit out for South Africa myself. I needed to learn what had become of her. I needed to discover what I could about her backstory, a term we in the literature game are wont to use. God knows she’d been maddeningly inscrutable that summer in Kelso. One moment she would stun me with some outlandish revelation. The next moment she’d clamp her mouth shut, refusing to utter another word. Still, over time, she did divulge the rough outlines of her private chronicle — the events that eventually brought her to Canada. A scandal was what it was, a messy, sordid affair that ended in cold-blooded murder, and Hilary had been right there in the thick of it.

  Never mind that she herself was innocent, a victim of abuse and injustice, of terrible, unlawful deeds. People in South Africa did not seem to care about that — white people, anyway — and so she had come to Canada. She told me she’d been banished by her own flesh and blood, her own father. It was expected that she would remain until the scandal died down.

  I was able to learn this much and even somewhat more, enough to know that hers was among the sorriest tales I had ever heard. The name of the dead man was Muletsi Dadla, who’d been her companion and soulmate. That was before he was shot twice in the head while trying to escape the country by fording the swollen waters of the Tsoelike River on horseback, something only a fool would attempt — a fool or a desperate man. From what Hilary told me, the villain of the tale was a certain individual named Jack Tanner. He was a tough, mean-spirited cockney, and a pedophile to boot, who worked as the stable manager at her father’s farm. It was he who shot Muletsi Dadla and then pushed his lifeless body into the rushing waters of the Tsoelike. What was more, he got off scot-free. You could do that in South Africa — murder a man and walk away.

  This, at least, was the account that Hilary related to me, and I had no reason to doubt it, no reason to suspect it might not be true in every last detail. After all, there had to be some reason she’d pitched up in Canada, and her explanation made sense to me. She told me she was expected to change her reckless ways, something that might be possible in a country as peaceful and righteous as Canada. This was the hope, anyway, and it wasn’t wholly misplaced. But in Hilary’s case, the cure somehow failed to take effect. Try as she might, she could not shake her sinful reputation. People who knew nothing of the matter still held her to blame for what they saw as her deplorable ways. They didn’t know the truth. They had no idea what she had been through. Her own boyfriend shot and killed before her very eyes. Murdered by the man who had tormented her since she’d been a child. Who wouldn’t go astray after something like that? If only people knew the truth, they might have given her a decent shake.

  Or maybe not. Maybe there was no escape. Maybe the taint of outrage would have clung to that girl no matter what she did, or where she went, or what other people knew or thought they knew. That’s the way scandal seems to work. It gets into your pores and then your bones and can’t be washed away. It goes with you everywhere.

  As for me, the stain of long-ago scandal is not what I most vividly recall when I think of Hilary Anson now, as I often do, as I likely always will. Instead, I remember those three indelible months in Kelso in 1963, a season in my life when suddenly anything seemed possible — anything at all — a season that began with that fox hunt in late spring, when I first set eyes on the South African girl.

  The rest of us riders stayed well out of the way while she and Club Soda raced ahead, back and forth, zigzagged hither and yon, splashing or galloping through ponds and copses, flying over split-rail oxers, gathering up stray hounds and chasing them back to the main pack. Club Soda was drenched with sweat, lathered and muddy. Veils of steam swirled around him whenever he and Hilary Anson paused. But that was only for an instant. Almost immediately, she would nudge her heels against his coppery flanks and, just like that, he would burst again into a gallop, and they were gone.

  TWO

  Sam

  Ontario, Spring 1963

  “THEY SAY SHE’S AN absolute terror.” My mother set her drink down on the kitchen counter and untied her apron. “Deirdre Barker is at her wit’s end. No one can control the girl. Drinking. Smoking. Boys. And I don’t know what else.” She looked at my father, who was using a dishtowel to rub water stains from the highball glasses. “Hal …?”

  “Yes, Mary?”

  “Did you hear what I said?”

  “Yes. Drinking. Smoking. The Anson girl.”

  “Girl is right. She’s only eighteen, I’m told. Is this the way all children are brought up in South Africa?”

  “I don’t think all. At least, not according to my understanding. There are certain exceptions.”

  “Well, I can’t say I’m very impressed. Poor Deirdre. She was on the telephone for hours today, telling me about it. She — Sam! Put that back! How many times do I have to tell you?”

  I pulled my hand back from a plate of canapés — oysters or pink shrimp on small rounds of Melba toast. It was Saturday evening, a week after the hunt with Hilary Anson, and company was expected, including the Barkers. I rested my elbows on the stout wooden bar overlooking the kitchen.

  “She’s ebullient,” I said. It was a new word that I was trying out. “Hilary Anson. I think she’s ebullient.”

  “Ebullient!” My mother snorted. “That’s not my idea of ebullient. Not by a long shot.”

  “Well, anyway, she can ride. You should have seen her. Even Major Duval says so.” He was a former Belgian cavalry officer who taught us equitation each Sunday at the club. I made a not-very-successful attempt to mimic the major’s nasal French accent. “She ride zat horse like a shenius. If I ’ad not see it wiz my own eyes, I would never ’ave believe it.”

  “Well, riding isn’t everything.” My mother tapped the side of her drink with fingernails lacquered in burgundy.

  Maybe not, but it was certainly something. I had overheard
the major talking to some of the parents after riding lessons at the club that week. He was saying that Hilary Anson’s apparent wildness in the saddle was an illusion. In fact, she knew exactly what she was doing and was in constant communion with her horse. Normally a careless — even dangerous — jumper, Club Soda suddenly became sensible and deliberate with Hilary Anson aboard. It was a rare thing, he’d said, that kind of subtle, precise communication between horse and rider. It was certainly a gift. It couldn’t be taught.

  I shrugged and looked down at the canapés. I liked the shrimp ones best.

  “Oh, all right. You can have one.” My mother swallowed the last of her preparatory Scotch and soda. She asked my father for another — the secondary preparatory.

  The guests started to show up at seven thirty, and the house was gradually transformed into a whirl and hubbub of cigarette smoke, buzzing voices, groans, clinking glasses, and peals of sudden laughter. Charlotte made a brief appearance and then waltzed back upstairs to watch TV in our parents’ bedroom. I stayed downstairs. I liked to observe the adults as they drank and made jokes and put their heads back in that strangely festive way. I watched the proceedings from the kitchen counter or wandered through the rooms, collecting empty glasses or spilling water into ashtrays from a highball glass, to make sure the cigarettes were out.

  Colonel Barker and his wife were late arrivals — and they brought Hilary Anson.

  She marched straight over to stand beside me near the bar. “Howzit?” she said. “My name’s Hilary. What’s yours?”

  “Sam,” I said.

  She pursed her lips from side to side, as if testing the effect of my name on her palate. Then she shrugged. “Shame. There’s no one here under fifty.”

  “Forty,” I said. “My mum and dad are both around forty, I think.”

  “Hmm.”

  She wore a tasselled brown leather vest over a blue turtleneck jersey and a short denim skirt. Her thick slate-black hair was brushed back in several waves that framed her face, oval with high cheekbones. She was wearing pale-red lipstick, her eyes were preternaturally blue, and she was easily the most smashing girl I had ever seen. Or heard. She spoke with a breathy, emphatic intonation, at once singsongy and clipped, much more interesting than our flat, central Canadian drone.

  “Ag, I could kill for a smoke,” she said and popped an oyster on Melba toast into her mouth, followed by another. “Where’s the loo, hey?” She looked at me and swallowed.

  “There’s three.”

  “Right. Where are they?”

  “There’s one over —”

  “Shush. Don’t point. Which one’s yours?”

  “It’s upstairs. It’s —”

  “Don’t tell me. Show me. Come.” She looked around, once over each shoulder, like a spy embarking on a secret mission. “But, first, a drink.”

  Not a drink, it turned out. Drinks. Hilary snuck them from the bar — two for her, two for me. She handed me a pair of highball glasses, and I led the way upstairs, past my parents’ bedroom, where Charlotte was perched cross-legged on the bed, bathed in milky, bluish light, transfixed by the TV screen. I walked partway down the hall and stopped.

  “It’s in there,” I said and motioned with my arm.

  “Don’t point. It’s not polite.”

  Hilary strode ahead into the bathroom and flicked on the light with her elbow, somehow knowing instinctively the location of the switch. She turned around.

  “Hey …?” she said. “Aren’t you coming in?” She raised one of her glasses. “I hate to drink alone.”

  I looked around, as if someone might be watching. No one was, so I shrugged and shuffled into the bathroom. Hilary closed and locked the door behind me, swayed over to the bathtub, set down her drinks on the rim, and lowered the lid of the toilet. She sat down and nodded at the edge of the ceramic tub. “You can sit there.”

  I eased myself over and huddled on the side of the tub, my knees about six inches from Hilary’s.

  “Here.” She took one of my drinks and set it on the floor, along with one of hers. “Now, a toast.” She raised her other glass. “To equality and strong drink!” She clinked her glass against mine, took a gulp, and grimaced. “Yechhh. Scotch and Coke.” She shivered, shaking her head. “Tastes vile — but at least it doesn’t look suspicious.”

  I glanced at my drink. I glanced at her. “I’m not supposed to drink alcohol,” I said.

  She rolled her eyes. “Obviously. That’s why there’s Coke in it. No one will know.”

  “That’s not what I mean. I mean I’m not supposed to drink alcohol.”

  For a while, she stared at me without speaking. It was as if she had just discovered a new sort of primate, a species that had never been encountered or even imagined before. Then she nodded. “I see.” She took my drink and set it on the tiled floor. “All the more for me.”

  I closed my eyes. Idiot. Moron. I opened my eyes again. “Maybe just a sip?”

  “Attaboy, tiger.” She retrieved my drink and handed it to me. She raised her own. “Chin-chin.”

  I clinked my glass against Hilary’s and then raised it to my lips. I let a little of the liquid pool at my throat and then swallowed. It was sort of sweet and bitter at the same time — not good, but not terrible, either. I took another sip.

  “Easy does it, my boykie. I poured it quite strong.”

  She took a good-sized swallow herself and then narrowed her eyes, peering straight at me, as if plotting her next move. She set her glass on the bathtub’s ledge and started poking around in her leather shoulder bag. She pulled out a package of Rothmans and a booklet of matches. She made quite a business of lighting up, then closed her eyes and blew out three perfect smoke rings. One. Two. Three. She opened her eyes and smiled.

  “I can only do that as long as I’m not looking. Don’t know why.” She tapped a bit of ash into the bathtub. “Ag. All those grown-ups. I can’t stand them.”

  I took another sip of my drink. Not half bad, in fact. “Me, either,” I said.

  “Kindred spirits.” She clenched her cigarette between her teeth and reached back into her shoulder bag, which now slumped on the floor. “Here, I’ve got something to show you.”

  This time she produced, of all things, a handgun. She pointed it straight at me.

  “Bang!” she said.

  “Whoa!” I must have ducked or done a double take, the way comedians do on TV. I had never seen a gun in my life, or not up close — not a real, actual gun. And, just as surely, no one had ever pointed any kind of gun at me. At once, my heart was racing. “Is that real?”

  “Yebo.”

  “Why do you have a gun?”

  She shrugged, turning the weapon over in her hands. “Protection. Why do you think?”

  “Is it loaded?”

  She squinted at me as if it had just occurred to her that I might not be in full command of my mental faculties. “Is it loaded …?” she said. “No, no. Of course not. I always wander around with a gun that isn’t loaded. I like the way it goes with my hair.” She tilted her head. “Are you serious?”

  “I don’t know. It’s just that I’ve never seen a gun before, not in person. They’re banned in this house, even toy guns.” I took another mouthful of my Scotch and Coke. “What kind is it?”

  “Makarov. Russian-built. All the Soviet police have one.”

  “Can I hold it?”

  She shook her head. “Not on your life, soldier. The man who gave it to me is Nelson Mandela, and he made me promise never to let it out of my possession except in circumstances most dire. His words exactly. It’s my duty to the cause.”

  “Who’s Nelson Mandela?”

  She closed her eyes and blew another trio of smoke rings into the air. She opened her eyes again and looked at me. “One day, my boykie, you will want to strangle yourself for asking me that.” She clutched at her throat with one hand and pretended to gag. “Mark my words. Next question.”

  I asked what cause she was talking about. />
  “What cause …?” Hilary smiled. “Ah, well. That I can explain.” She reached into her shoulder bag again. This time she produced a dog-eared paperback book and held it out to show me. The title was Cry, the Beloved Country. “Alan Paton. Ever heard of him?”

  I shook my head.

  She riffled the pages. “Well, prepare yourself, my boykie. You’re about to be transported.”

  She took another puff of her cigarette and began to read aloud. Almost at once, I felt my back grow rigid and then give way as a shiver ran up my spine. It was the slow, dignified tempo of the words. They gripped me from the first sentence — the rhythm itself plus the effect of Hilary’s voice. She read in the mournful tone someone might use at a funeral to talk about some great person who had died. She continued reading until our drinks were emptied. Then she smoked another cigarette and read some more.

  Later that night, after the guests had departed and I had gone to bed, I heard my mother totter along the hall in her high heels. She knocked at my door and edged it open.

  “You awake?” she said. She was holding a drink in one hand and an earring in the other, massaging her earlobe.

  “Yebo … I mean, yup.”

  I raised myself against the pillows and let a book flop, still open, at my side — a biography of Sir Isaac Newton. Just now, I was feeling a bit queasy from the drinks. I looked up at my mother.

  “I was reading,” I said.

  She nodded and stepped into the room. She perched herself on the bed, close to my knees.

  “Sam …”

  “Yes, Mum.”

  “I have a question for you.”

  “Okay.”

  She shifted her weight. “You … you would never hurt a girl, would you?”

  “Sorry … what …?”

  “Pardon. I beg your pardon. You know. A girl. You would never hurt a …?” She hesitated. “Do I smell alcohol? Have you been drinking?”

  “No.”