My most recent visit, five years previously, had been optimistically expected to last five days. I had arrived on Christmas Eve all smiles, with bags of presents and good intent, and I'd left before lunch on Christmas morning, sent on my way by a tirade of abuse. And the silly thing was, I couldn't now remember why we had argued. We didn't seem to need a reason, not a big one anyway.
Perhaps tomorrow would be better. I hoped so, but I doubted it. The lesson of experience over expectation was one I had finally begun to learn.
Maybe I shouldn't have come, but somehow I had needed to. This place was where I'd grown up, and in some odd way it still represented safety and security. And in spite of the shouting, the arguments and the fights, it was the only home I'd ever had.
I lay on the bed and looked up at the familiar ceiling with its decorative molding around the light fixture. It reminded me so much of the hours I had spent lying in exactly the same way as a spotty seventeen-year-old longing to be free, longing to join the army and escape from my adolescent prison. And yet here I was again, back in the same place, imprisoned again, this time by my disability but still longing to be in the army, determined to rejoin my regiment, hungry to be back in command of my troops and eager to be, once more, fighting and killing the enemy.
I sighed, stood up and looked at myself in the mirror on the wardrobe door. I looked normal, but looks could be deceptive.
I sat down on the edge of the bed and removed my prosthesis, rolling down the flesh-colored rubber sleeve that gripped over my real knee, keeping the false lower leg and foot from falling off. I slowly eased my stump out of the tight-fitting cup and removed the foam-plastic liner. It was all very clever. Molded to fit me exactly by the boys at Dorset Orthopedic, they had constructed a limb that I could walk on all day without causing so much as a pressure sore, let alone a blister.
But it still wasn't me.
I looked again at the mirror on the wardrobe door. Now my reflection didn't appear so normal.
Over the past few months, I suppose I had become familiar with the sight of my right leg finishing so abruptly some seven inches below my knee. Familiar, it might have been, but I was far from comfortable with the state of affairs, and every time I caught a glimpse of myself in a mirror without my prosthesis, I was still shocked and repulsed by the image.
Why me? I thought for the millionth time.
Why me?
I shook my head.
Feeling sorry for myself wasn't going to help me get back to combat-ready fitness.
3
Has Josephine Lost Her Magic?"
The front-page headline of Sunday's Racing Post couldn't have been more blunt. The paper lay on the kitchen table when I went downstairs at eight o'clock to make myself some coffee after a disturbed night.
I wondered if my mother or stepfather had been down to the kitchen yet, and if so, had they seen the headline? Perhaps I should hide it. I looked around for something to casually place over the paper, as I could hear my mother coming down the stairs, but it was too late anyway.
"That bastard Rambler," she was shouting. "He knows sod all."
She swept into the kitchen in a light-blue quilted dressing gown and white slippers. She snatched up the newspaper from the table and studied the front-page article intently.
"It says here that Pharmacist was distressed after the race." My mother was shouting over her shoulder, obviously for the benefit of my stepfather, who had sensibly stayed upstairs. "That's not bloody true. How would Rambler know anyway? He'd have been propping up a bar somewhere. Everyone knows he's a drunk."
I shifted on my feet, my false leg making its familiar metallic clink.
"Oh, hello," said my mother, apparently seeing me for the first time. "Have you read this rubbish?" she demanded.
"No," I said.
"Well, don't," she said, throwing the paper back down on the table. "It's a load of crap."
She turned on her heel and disappeared back upstairs as quickly as she had arrived, shouting obscenities and telling all the world how she would "have Rambler's head on a platter for this."
I leaned down and turned the paper around so I could read it.
"From our senior correspondent Gordon Rambler at Cheltenham" was printed under the headline. I read on: Josephine Kauri was at a loss for words after her eight-year-old Gold Cup prospect, Pharmacist, finished last in the Janes Bank Trophy yesterday at Cheltenham. The horse clearly did not stay the three-mile trip, and finished at a walk and in some distress. The Cheltenham stewards ordered that the horse be routine-tested.
This is not the first time in recent weeks that the Kauris' horses have seemingly run out of puff in big races. Her promising novice chaser Scientific suffered the same fate at Kempton in December, and questions were asked about another Kauri horse Oregon at Newbury last week, when it failed to finish in the first half-dozen when a heavily backed favorite.
Is Josephine losing her magic touch that had won her such respect as well as numerous big prizes? With the Cheltenham Festival now only five weeks away, can we expect a repeat of last year's fantastic feats, or have the Kauri horses simply flattered to deceive?
Gordon Rambler had pulled no punches. He went on to speculate that Mrs. Kauri might be overtraining the horses at home, such that they had passed their peak by the time they reached the racetrack. It would not have been the first time a trainer had inadvertently "lost the race on the gallops," as it was known, although I would be surprised if my mother had, not after so many years of experience. Not unless, as the paper said, she had lost her magic touch.
But she hadn't lost her touch for shouting. I could hear her upstairs in full flow, although I couldn't quite make out the words. No doubt my stepfather was suffering the wrath of her tongue. I almost felt sorry for him. But only almost.
I decided it might be prudent for me to get out of the house for a while, so I went for a wander around the stables.
The block nearest the house, the one over which Ian Norland lived, was just one side of three quadrangles of stables, each containing twenty-four stalls, that stretched away from the house.
When my mother had acquired the place from her first husband there had been far fewer stables, laid out in two lines of wooden huts. But by the time my father had packed up and left nine years later, my mother had built the first of the current redbrick rectangles. The second was added when I'd been about fifteen, and the third more recently in what had once been a lunging paddock. And there was still enough of the paddock remaining to add a fourth, if required.
Even on a Sunday morning, the stables were a hive of activity. The horses needed to be fed and watered seven days a week, although my mother, along with most trainers, still resisted the temptation to treat Sunday as just another day to send strings of horses out on the gallops. But that was probably more to do with having to pay staff double time on Sundays rather than any wish to keep the Sabbath special.
"Good morning," Ian Norland called to me as he came out of one of the stalls. "Still here, then?"
"Yes," I said. Surely, I thought, I hadn't implied anything to him the previous afternoon. "Why wouldn't I still be here?"
"No reason," he said, smiling. "Just…"
"Just what?" I asked with some determination.
"Just that Mrs. Kauri doesn't seem to like guests staying overnight. Most go home after dinner."
"This is my home," I said.
"Oh," he said. "I suppose it is."
He seemed slightly flustered, as if he had already said too much to the son of his employer. He was right. He had.
"And how is Pharmacist this morning?" I asked, half hoping for some more indiscretion.
"Fine," he said rather dismissively.
"How fine?" I persisted.