I hold the coffee can of grain very still. “That’s true,” I say. “Both of those things are true.”
“That’s what I thought. So I told him I was coming down here to talk you out of it.” She looks less than pleased with this idea. I thought it was probably one of those ideas that sounded better when you were lying in bed with your ruddy husband rather than standing in the misty cold morning staring at the reality of me.
“I’m sorry that you came all this way,” I say, although I’m not, and it’s unusual for me to lie before a proper breakfast. “Because I can’t be talked out of it.”
She puts one of her hands on her hip and the other on the back of her head, crushing her curly hair flat. It’s such a fierce posture of frustration that I feel a little bad that I’m the one causing it. “Is it the money?” she asks, finally.
I’m not sure if I’m insulted or not. I mean, clearly, yes, we need the money, but I would’ve had to be the island’s best fool if I thought that I stood a chance of winning against those massive horses.
A part of me prickles at that, and I realize, guiltily, that a tiny, tiny part of me, small enough to dissolve in a teacup or work a blister in the heel of a shoe, must’ve been daydreaming of that possibility. Beating the horses that had killed my parents on a pony that I’d grown up on. I must be the island’s best fool, after all.
“It’s for personal reasons,” I say stiffly. Which is what my mother had always told me to say about things that had to do with fighting with your brothers, getting any sort of illness that had intestinal ramifications, starting your period, and money. And this decision covered two out of the four, so I thought the statement was well earned.
Peg looks at me and I can tell she’s trying to read between the lines. Finally, she says, “I don’t think you know what you’re getting into. It’s a war down there.”
I shrug, which makes me feel like Finn, which makes me wish I hadn’t done it.
“You could die.”
I can see now that she’s trying to shock me. This is the least shocking thing she could say, though.
“I have to do it,” I tell her.
Dove chooses that moment to emerge, and she is mud-stained and small and faintly damning. She comes over to the fence and tries to nibble the saddle. I give her a foul look. She’s muscled and in good shape, but in comparison to the capaill uisce I saw yesterday, she’s like a toy.
Peg sighs and gives a nod, but it’s not for me. It’s a well, at least I tried nod. She clomps back through the mud and knocks her boots on the edge of the car door to keep from getting so much filth inside the beautiful red car. I rub Dove’s nose and feel bad about disappointing fierce Peg Gratton.
After a moment, I hear my name and see that Father Mooneyham is calling me. I can’t believe that Peg would have convinced Father that me on the beach is a spiritual matter, and my path to the passenger-side window is a dutiful rather than happy one.
“Kate Connolly,” Father Mooneyham says. He’s a very long man all over, with knobs for a chin bone and his cheekbones and the end of his nose. Each knob is slightly reddened. There is a knob for his Adam’s apple, too, which I saw once when he had been knocked off his bicycle and his collar had gone askew. It was not reddened.
“Father,” I say.
He looks at me and puts his thumb in a little cross on my forehead like he used to when I was small and still spit when I was in church. “Come to confession. It’s been a long time.”
Peg and I both wait for him to say something else. But he just rolls his window back up and motions for Peg to reverse out of the yard. As they do, I see Finn’s face smashed up against the bedroom window, getting a glimpse of the splendid car as it pulls away.
CHAPTER THIRTEEN
I stand in a round pen in the Malvern Yard with an American at my elbow, both of us watching Corr trot around us. It’s a pale blue morning that needs time to become pleasant. I was intending to spend it on the beach before everyone else got there, but Malvern caught me and pressed the buyer onto me before I could get clear. I didn’t think taking a stranger to the beach was a good idea, so I headed to the round pen to school until my visitor got bored. The rule requiring the capaill to train on the shore only counts if they’re under saddle, something I always take advantage of. There’s not much that can be done in a round pen that will prepare you for life on the beaches.
Already Corr has been going in circles at the end of the lunge line for twenty minutes. The American is enthusiastic but reverent, more awed by me, I think, than by Corr. Our accents make us cautious with each other.
“Quite a remarkable structure. This was built just for the capaill uisce?” he asks. He’s very careful with the last words, but his pronunciation is good. Coppie ooshka.
I nod. On the other side of the stables is the round pen that I exercise the sport horses in, sixteen yards across with high fence-like walls built of light metal tubing. Corr wouldn’t tolerate the metal for very long, and even if he did, everyone is too afraid to put a capall uisce in something that looks like it would blow away. So instead we’re in this fearfully wondrous pen that Malvern devised sometime before I arrived, dug eight feet into the side of a hill so that the earth makes a solid wall around it. The only entrance is a high-dirt-walled path ending at an oak door that serves as part of the pen’s wall. I like it well enough, except for when it floods.
“Capaill uisce? Capall uisce?” The American frowns now, doubting his usage.
“Capaill is plural. Capall is singular.”
“Roger. It’s never sure if it’s raining or not here, is it?” asks the American. He’s very handsome, in his late thirties, wearing a navy flat cap, a white V-neck sweater, and slacks that won’t stay that pressed for long in this humidity. The sky spits at us, but it’s not really rain. It’ll be gone before I head down to the beach with the others. “How long will you trot him out?”
Corr is already annoyed with the gait. My father once said that no water horse was meant to trot. Any horse has four natural gaits – walk, trot, canter, gallop – and there’s no reason for one to be preferable over another. But Corr would sooner gallop until he’s lathered like the surf than trot for half the time. My mother once said that I hadn’t been built to trot, either, and that’s true, too. It’s too slow to be exciting, too jolting to be comfortable. I’m perfectly content to let Corr do it on his own right now, without me on his back.
At the moment, he can tell that he’s being watched by a stranger, however, so he picks his feet up and tosses his mane just a little more than usual. I allow him his show. There are worse flaws than vanity in a horse.
The American’s still looking at me, so I reply, “Just taking the edge off. The beach will be crowded again today, and I don’t want to bring three fresh horses down there.”
“Well, he’s a beauty,” the American says. It’s meant to flatter me, and it does. He adds, “I see by your smile you already know.”
I didn’t think I was smiling, but I did already know.
“I’m George Holly, by the way,” the American says. “I’d shake your hand if it wasn’t occupied.”
“Sean Kendrick.”
“I know. You’re why I came. They said it wasn’t a race unless you were in it.”
My mouth quirks. “Malvern said you had your eye on some yearlings.”
“Well, I came for them, too.” Holly wipes the mist from his eyebrows. “But I could’ve sent my agent for them. How many times have you won?”
“Four.”
“Four! You’re the man to beat. A national treasure. Regional treasure, perhaps. Does Thisby have home rule? Why don’t you race on the mainland? Or maybe you do and I’ve missed it. We get your news slowly, you know.”