Kemp-Lore got out of the car, tipped forward the driver’s seat, and tugged me out after him by the wrists. I couldn’t get my feet under me because of the hobble, and I fell out on to the back of my shoulders. The ground was hard and gravelly. My shirt tore, and the sharp stones scraped into my skin.
He pulled me to my feet, and I stood there swaying, blinded by the plaster on my eyes and unable to run even if I could have wrenched myself from his grasp. He had some sort of lead fixed to my tied wrists, and he began to pull me forward by it. The ground was uneven and the rope joining my ankles was very short. I kept stumbling, and twice fell down.
It was very unpleasant, falling when I couldn’t see, but I managed somehow to twist before hitting the ground, landing on my shoulders instead of my face. Always he pulled my hands so far in front of me that I couldn’t reach the sticking plaster: the second time I fell I made a great effort to get it off, but he wrenched my arms roughly over my head and dragged me along the ground on my back for a long way. I very painfully lost a good deal more skin.
At length he paused and let me stand up again. He still didn’t speak. Not a word. And I couldn’t. There was only the sound of our footsteps on the stony ground and the faint sigh of the sharp north-easter in some near-by trees. My tattered shirt was no shield against that wind, and I began to shiver.
He stopped, and there was the sound of a door being opened, and I was tugged in. This time there was a step up, as I realised a fraction too late to prevent myself falling again. I hadn’t time to twist, either. I fell flat on my stomach, elbows and chest. It knocked the wind out of me and made me dizzy.
It was a wooden floor, I thought, with my cheek on it. It smelled strongly of dust, and faintly of horses. He pulled me to my feet again and I felt my wrists being hauled upwards and fastened to something just above my head. When he had finished and stepped away I explored with my fingers to find out what it was; and as soon as I felt the smooth metal hooks, I knew exactly the sort of place I was in.
It was a tack-room. Every stable has one. It is the place where the saddles and bridles are kept, along with all the brushes and straps and bandages and rugs that horses need. From the ceiling of every tack-room hangs a harness hook, a gadget something like a three-pronged anchor, which is used for hanging bridles on while they are being cleaned. There were no bridles hanging from these particular hooks. Only me. I was securely fastened at the point where they branched off their stem.
Most tack-rooms are warm, heated by a stove which dries damp rugs and prevents leather getting mildewed. This tack-room was very cold indeed, and in the air the ingrained smells of leather and saddle soap were overlaid by a dead sort of mustiness. It was an unused room: an empty room. The silence took on a new meaning. There were no horses moving in the boxes. It was an empty stable. I shivered from something more than cold.
I heard him step out into the gritty yard, and presently there was the familiar rattle of bolts and the clang of a stable door being opened. After a few seconds it was shut again, and another one was opened. This again was shut, and another opened. He went on down the row, opening six doors. I thought he must be looking for something, and numbly wondered what it was, and began to hope very much that he wouldn’t find it.
After the sixth stable door shut he was gone for some time, and I couldn’t hear what he was doing. But the car had not been started, so I knew he must still be there. I could make no impression at all on the strands of rope twined round my wrists. They were narrow and slippery to touch, and felt like nylon, and I couldn’t even find a knot, much less undo one.
Eventually he came back, and dumped down outside the door something that clattered. A bucket.
He stepped into the room and walked softly on the wooden floor. He stopped in front of me. It was very quiet everywhere. I could hear a new sound, the high, faint asthmatic wheeze of the air going into his lungs. Even an empty stable, it seemed, could start him off.
Nothing happened for a while. He walked all round me, slowly, and stopped again. Walked, and stopped. Making up his mind, I thought. But to do what?
He touched me once, dragging his gloved hand across my raw shoulders. I flinched, and his breath hissed sharply. He began to cough, the dry difficult asthmatic’s cough. And may you choke, I thought.
He went outside, still coughing, and picked up the bucket and walked away across the yard. I heard the bucket clatter down and a tap being turned on. The water splashed into the bucket, echoing in the stillness.
Jack and Jill went up the hill, said my brain ridiculously, to fetch a pail of water. Jack fell down and broke his crown and Jill threw the water all over him.
Oh no, I thought, oh no, I’m so cold already. Part of my mind said I wouldn’t mind what he did to me if only he’d let me go in time to ride Template, and the rest said don’t be a fool, that’s the whole point, he won’t let you go, and anyway if you do get away you’ll be so cold and stiff after this you won’t be able to ride a donkey.
He turned off the tap and came back across the yard, the water splashing slightly as he walked. He brought the bucket with him into the tack room and stopped behind me. The handle of the bucket clanked. I ground my teeth and took a deep breath, and waited.
He threw the water. It hit me squarely between the shoulder blades and soaked me from head to foot. It was bitterly, icy cold, and it stung like murder on the skinned patches.
After a short pause he went across the yard again and refilled the bucket. I thought I was almost past caring about that. You can’t be wetter than wet and you can’t be colder than freezing. And my arms, with being hauled up higher than my head, were already beginning to feel heavy and to ache. I began to worry less about the immediate future, and more about how long he intended to leave me where I was.
He came back with the bucket, and this time he threw the water in my face. I had been wrong about not caring. It was at least as bad as the first time, mostly because too much of it went up my nose. Couldn’t he see, I thought desperately, that he was drowning me. My chest hurt. I couldn’t get my breath. Surely he’d pull the plaster off my mouth, surely... surely...
He didn’t.
By the time a reasonable amount of air was finding its way into my heaving lungs he was across the yard again, with more water splashing into the bucket. In due course he turned the tap off, and his feet began once more to crunch methodically in my direction. Up the step and across the wooden floor. There wasn’t anything I could do to stop him. My thoughts were unprintable.
He came round in front of me again. I twisted my face sideways and buried my nose against my upper arm. He poured the whole arctic bucketful over my head. After this, I thought, I am going to have more sympathy for those clowns in circuses. I hoped the poor blighters used warm water, anyway.
It seemed that he now thought that I was wet enough. In any case he dumped the bucket down outside the door instead of going to fill it again, and came back and stood close beside me. His asthma was worse.
He put his hand in my hair and pulled my head back, and spoke for the first time.
He said in a low voice, with obvious satisfaction, ‘That should fix you.’
He let go of my hair and went out of the room, and I heard him walk away across the yard. His footsteps faded into the distance and after a while there was the distant slam of the Mini-Cooper’s door. The engine started, the car drove off, and soon I could hear it no more.
It wasn’t very funny being abandoned in a trussed condition soaking wet on a cold night. I knew he wouldn’t be back for hours, because it was Friday. From eight o’clock until at least nine-thirty he would be occupied with his programme; and I wondered in passing what effect his recent capers would have on his performance.