Time Flies… by Sabrina

Time Flies…

Sabrina

It’s been more than 30 years since Dora and Steve first came to Follyfoot. What would life have held for them since then? Would they have stayed together? Would Follyfoot have survived as a rest home for horses? How would time take its toll on all the people and horses of Follyfoot? This is my personal take on what might have happened…

Warning: Hanky rating *****

Outside, the Lightning Tree looked stark against the February clouds. Dora lifted her eyes from the PC monitor, took off the reading glasses she hated and gave those eyes a careful rub; she still liked her black eyeliner – but not to the level she did thirty years ago – and surveyed the tree.

It had been a mercurial barometer of their relationship in its own way. The green leaves that had miraculously bloomed soon after she and Steve met had become a bough of green, incongruous against the black, shattered limbs of the tree. As their relationship lurched from good to intolerable, the green leaves had come back slower and less bountiful each spring.

Would they come at all with the next spring? She wondered.

On the far side of the yard, where the new stables, built twenty years ago, had slowly assumed the golden, slightly derelict patina of the old, Steve heaved the last pitchfork of dirty straw into the wheelbarrow and rubbed his back.

Dora felt a pang for the early days, when it was all so wonderful and they had hopes and dreams and more than enough love. Now they were both married to Follyfoot rather than each other, existing in a boss-and-manager situation. Neither could live without Follyfoot, and, she suspected, without the other, even if their conversation these days revolved around budgets, donations, racehorse trainers and horses when they weren’t arguing.

She watched him wheel the barrow to the muck heap; he was still whiplash thin, and weathered now from years outdoors, a cobweb of wrinkles around his eyes; rather endearing, she thought in softer moments. His hair was still thick but now peppered with grey, and much shorter than it used to be.

The e-mail program beeped at her. A message from their daughter Jennifer, who was in her final year of study at the Royal School of Veterinary Studies in Edinburgh, known to one and all as Dick Vet.

If something really wonderful had come out of their relationship, it was Jennifer and Jake. Lovely Jen, who could have been Dora herself at 23, with the same slightly ski jump nose dusted with freckles and centre-parted long brown hair. She’d been all for simply staying at Follyfoot and working with the horses, but Dora and her uncle the Colonel had suggested she try hard at her O and A levels and become a vet, as she was a natural with animals of all types and had the gift of healing, which Dora suspected she’d inherited from Steve’s mysterious side of the family. Studying was hard for Jennifer, but she’d pulled out all stops in her final year at school, gained enough A levels to shock herself and anyone else who knew her, and dove into vet studies with the joyousness of an otter. Now she was set to graduate next year and concentrate on horse medicine.

And Jake… mercurial Jake was balancing being a professional event rider with business studies, as he intended to take on Follyfoot when his parents were ready to retire. Dora didn’t tell him she had no intention of retiring for a long while yet – what would she do with her life if she did? – but encouraged him in everything he attempted. A natural rider, and blessed with good sponsors who bought him top horses, he was slated for selection in the next Olympic team. His wide grin and dark good looks had made him a pinup boy in pony clubs across the nation. He called into Follyfoot occasionally on his many trips that criss-crossed the countryside.

Yes, they were kids their parents were extremely proud of. Dora smiled at the thought and Jen’s e-mail, which was dotted with the names of other students and people Dora had never met. Outgoing Jen was the opposite of shy Dora. By the time she’d slowly pecked back a reply with two fingers, her stomach was rumbling. Time to put on lunch.

Slugger sat snoring in the living room, and Dora tiptoed past to the kitchen. Typically, she cooked lunch for everyone at Follyfoot these days. Slugger, now pushing 80, refused to retire, so Dora let him loose in the kitchen occasionally, ignoring the shaky hands that dropped most things they picked up. He also fed a couple of the horses when he was feeling well enough and the weather was warm. She and Steve told him he was indispensable, which is what he needed to hear.

Slugger was one of the main reasons neither she or Steve could leave for good. He was their surrogate father and best friend, and while pride wouldn’t let him admit he wasn’t in the best of health these days, he refused to go into a nursing home. Not that Dora or Steve would let him while they were around to take care of him.

Keeping as quiet as she could, Dora made thick chicken sandwiches, and heated up some of the soup Steve had made last night.

On cue, the kitchen door opened. “Wotcher,” said a voice that was both familiar and unfamiliar.

Dora grinned back at Reggie Stryker, Ron’s eldest son, who was on the payroll these days in place of his dad. Reggie had the same shock of red hair, the same blue eyes, and, to Dora’s despair, the same slightly dodgy nature of his father at the same age.

Ron, to everyone’s surprise, had married one of the village barmaids and promptly started a family that had produced six children, all red haired, laughing and rather naughty. Ron himself had done extraordinarily well in life. Twenty years ago he’d taken on a load of early Personal Computers as a favour to a bloke what owed him some dosh. To his surprise, the things sold like hot cakes. Ron got hold of some more – and now owned a successful chain of twelve computer dealers and repair shops across Yorkshire. To his regret he’d gone above board for the first time in his life, but the rewards were worth it. He and Debbie had built a huge new house only five miles from Follyfoot, on top of a hill with commanding views. Ron might live like a country squire, but the wicked grin was still the same, even if the red hair had turned grey and all but vanished. Dora had been touched to discover, when she first visited, Ron’s beloved old bike all shiny and restored, holding pride of place in the six car garage. Ron and Debbie, and occasionally some of their brood, still visited Follyfoot regularly for Sunday lunch; Steve had long since learned to cook a mean roast.

Reggie, however, had been brought up on the stories of the Ron of old, and had pestered his parents to let him work at Follyfoot. He supplemented his income – Follyfoot had never paid well – by selling dodgy DVDs out of the back of a van at pubs across the north, and was far happier than he would have been if he’d gone to uni like his mum wanted, he was fond of telling Dora.

“Wotcher, Reggie,” Dora responded. “Help yourself.”

“His lordship’s on the way in, too. He’s worried about Copper.”

“So am I. I’ll go and check on him after lunch.” Copper was ancient now, well in his thirties, his Arabian back swayed and rather bony. He’d had a chill last week, and was still rather off his food. Dora dreaded the day she’d have to say goodbye to him. She hadn’t ridden him in years – he deserved his retirement – but steadfastly looked after him herself, feeding, grooming and mucking him out as she’d always done. Like the Lightning Tree….would he come good in the spring and last another year?

Steve shut the door with enough careful force to wake Slugger in his chair.

“Wha-?” said Slugger, wiping drool from his chin. “I wasn’t asleep, was I? Lunch, is it?” Pulling himself up, he used a walking stick to shuffle from the living room to the kitchen.

“You wasn’t asleep. Ha, course you was!” Reggie said through a mouthful of soup.

“Course you was, ‘e says. No cheek from you, young Stryker.” Slugger stopped and gave a hacking cough that rocked him on his legs. Finally he drew breath. “I knew your Dad back when, and I could give him a hiding then and I could give you a hiding now.” Resting his stick on the back of a dining chair, he feinted a punch at the boy, who obligingly ducked and put a panic-stricken look on his face.

“Did you have a good morning?” Steve said neutrally to Dora.

“Very useful. Fred Jenkyns is sending us another six horses on Tuesday. And don’t say we can’t fit them in, we can. I can take Copper back home with me and put him in Uncle Geoffrey’s stables.”

Steve opened his mouth and shut it again. Yeah, they’d find room. For the kind of money Jenkyns paid to rest his flat racing horses during the steeplechasing season, they’d certainly find room.

As he sipped his soup, he reflected on how Follyfoot’s tenor had changed over the years. No more did they take on working horses past the end of their lives; no pit-ponies, no rag-and-bone man’s horse, no milkman’s steed. Working horses had been replaced by cars and vans and had simply died out. They took on foster cases rescued by the RSPCA, and got paid for it, and there was the occasional cruelty or neglect case they rescued themselves when a child had outgrown the love of his or her pony. They kept show and racehorses past the end of their useful lives, sometimes paid for, sometimes not – Dora still had a habit of falling for a pair of pleading dark equine eyes at the horse markets – but the bulk of their income now was as agistment for racehorse trainers. Sleek thoroughbreds arrived in padded giant lorries, were decanted into the yard, and each, with a whicker of delight, cantered around the fields, pulled grass with eager teeth and rolled in the mud with the enthusiasm of a ragged Thelwell pony.

Steve said neutrally, “Can you take Fangio back there as well? We’ll need his box in case it snows.”

Fangio – so named because he was the slowest horse ever born – was a long-term resident and had ambled through the gate fifteen years ago, dumped by his owners who were moving to Australia.

Dora nodded, watching her spoon swirl the noodles in her soup.

Steve stole a glance at her. She was still slim and beautiful; hard to believe she had children now in their twenties. Time had been kind to her, even if her hair was only all brown these days courtesy of L’Oreal. She wore it in a layered bob, often tucking it back behind the ears he used to nibble way back when. Crows feet around her eyes told of laughter, the faint frown lines between her eyebrows of the rougher times.

They’d been right then, all those people who said it wouldn’t work. She’s posh and you’re not, they told him. She won’t come down to your level and no matter how hard you try, you won’t get up to hers. She’s a dreamer, you’re a realist. Steve sighed. He’d give anything to have the courage to say, “Let’s give it another go,” but he’d said that too often before, and they’d tried, and it hadn’t worked. Now she was the boss, the owner, and he a paid manager, rather than the man who shared her bed.

He could go, of course. He’d gone before, twice in fact, and felt a heel both times because the kids had still been either young or in their teens, he was dumping Dora in the deep end and he was leaving everyone – Slugger and the other help included – in the lurch.

The first time he’d simply gone south and got a job in a racing yard in Berkshire, seeing his children when the yard sent him north as a travelling lad. Dora had despised him for it, challenged him and called him a coward, and it was the mix of spite in her voice but outright longing in her eyes that made him suggest another try. And for five years, it had worked. He’d missed his family and Follyfoot more than he could say, and threw himself back into it all with an enthusiasm that gave them a second honeymoon. Blissful days, with the kids nine and eleven, riding out on the moors with them, Copper still fit and Alex still alive. He couldn’t say exactly when it started to go wrong again, but one day he realised every conversation had turned into an argument, and recognising that and trying to stop it, to turn it around, only made it worse. Dora could never be wrong. Sadly, nor could he. Follyfoot wasn’t big enough for both of them, as long as they were in a relationship.

So Steve left again, and this time was away for nearly two years. He flew to America, and found himself in the Midwest after ambling around the orderliness of New England. The open spaces of Montana reminded him of the moors – big sky, emptiness, wildness, as empty and wild as he felt. During the bitter Montana winter he lived as a cowboy, on the alert for wolves and predators, some of them two legged, female and human. He tried to put Dora out of his mind with some of them, but when he woke in the morning it was her face he saw behind closed eyes, and not the blowsy blonde beside him. He stayed in Montana until the spring slowly turned to summer, and the snow melted from all but the high peaks. There was laughter in the air, and rejoicing, and too much happiness, the air rampant with sex as his mates celebrated the end of the snow with girls whose faces all blurred into one. He had to get out.

Steve had enough money for a ticket to Australia, and he chose the most punishing part of all of that harsh, big land, offering his services on a cattle property in the top end that was roughly the size of England itself. It was the end of the wet season when he arrived; the creeks were still flowing, the wildflowers were in bloom, the land looked lush as the light aircraft flew him into the cattle station. Below him sleek cattle, full on the new growth all around them, gleamed in the sun he would soon find relentless. Steve was one of several travellers working at the station. There was a New Zealander, whom everyone teased because of his accent, the girls making him say “six”, which came out “sex”, and giggling provocatively when he did. There was an American, who’d done his time in Montana too, and a pale Canadian man who didn’t ride but claimed to be a cook (he was worse than Slugger and only lasted two weeks before the station sent him to Darwin by the mail ‘plane). Once the wet season was over, things dried out in a hurry. The heat intensified until Steve was working in 40 degrees Celsius, the sweat pouring down his face under his traditional Australian felt wide-brimmed hat. The horses at the station were used to it; wiry Aussie stock horses, with sturdy legs. While a lot of the mustering was done by helicopter, riders were needed when the cattle were driven closer to the yards. Not yet was a motorbike built that could jump a fallen gum tree! Steve worked as one with his mount, a coffin-headed bay called Jack, and admired the dogs who worked with the jackeroos; skinny kelpies with their dingo ancestry, who flew like amber rockets across the red dust. He spent a year on the station, longer than the Kiwi or Yank, and saw ‘mad Swedes, whingeing Poms and bloody silly city slickers’ all take their turn in the outback and fail. If the heat was a killer, the wet was, as the others said, a bastard. Roads had to constantly be re-graded on the huge property as the punishing Northern Territory storms washed them away. Provisions had to be brought in before the wet to last months, and by the end of the wet season dinner had got to be boring indeed, with locally killed steer making the bulk of it. It was the wet that finally told him to go back home at the next chance he could; it wasn’t Yorkshire rain, it was simply hot and steamy, day after day after day. Yorkshire rain he could handle. Yorkshire rain he needed.

He didn’t tell Dora he was coming back, afraid she’d write him not to bother. He’d been a terrible correspondent, only writing to her sporadically, and receiving notes in return that lacked affection and concentrated, pointedly, on what the kids he’d left behind were doing, and how Dora was managing Follyfoot without his help. She never told him whether she was seeing anyone else; he couldn’t blame her if she did, he supposed.

He came in the autumn, walking up from the village, and saw only one brown leaf on top of the Lightning Tree, poised to fall at any moment. His heart thudded as he hung over the gate, so wonderfully familiar and solid. This was his home; he HAD to make it work again.

There she was, in her tatty old jeans, coming out of one of the stables. She rested the pitchfork against the wall, and covered her face with her hands, her shoulders shaking, her body slowly sliding down the wall, her sobs audible from the gate.

Steve fumbled with the latch; Dora had put a new one on in his absence, and the gate opened without its customary creak.

Dumping the old Army rucksack that had held his home, like a snail, over the last two years, he ran to her.

“Dora!”

She peered through her tears to see a thin, unkempt man running towards her, dark hair tied roughly back in a ponytail, a full beard shot through with a streak of grey. It took her a second to register that this was Steve, her Steve, and for a moment she forgot every harsh thought or word and simply fell into his arms.

She sobbed as if she would never stop, crying onto the awful old jacket Steve had picked up somewhere in his travels. His arms were around her, though, holding her tight as he’d always known how to do, and she didn’t know whether that was better or worse. What if he’d only come back to say he was going somewhere else? She’d never needed him so much… today was the worst day…

Dora hiccupped and tried to stop her tears while Steve kissed her hair and stroked her back. He’d longed for this moment so much for the last two years – without the tears, preferably, but Dora without tears for something or somebody wouldn’t be Dora. Her body felt slim and fragile beside the buxom lasses of Montana and the muscly outback girls who made love with a sweaty laugh. He wrapped his arms closer around her, nuzzling her neck with his beard, breathing in that faint perfume that had plagued his subconscious through all his travels.

Finally she stopped sobbing long enough to get out a word that chilled Steve’s heart: “Alex!”

He tipped her face up and met her eyes, and she nodded. “He’s gone, Steve,” she whispered. “This morning. I just went in to give him breakfast and he was lying there and…” She started crying again, and this time Steve cried with her, hanging onto her as his rock, his lifeline. He lost track of how long they stood clinging to each other; long enough for their feet to get cold from the still frosty earth, long enough to understand they still loved each other, and that he had been a fool to ever leave. And when Slugger put his kind old hand on Steve’s shoulder, and welcomed him back, it made the tears come even harder, and this time it was Dora holding him tight, and not the other way around.

He’d never left again, no matter how bad things had been. He’d buried his beloved horse in the field, hiring a bobcat for the grave. He’d got rid of the beard and long hair at the village barber’s before the kids came home from school, feeling naked afterwards after two years of looking and being a ruffian, and that first day back was a bittersweet mix of joy at seeing them again and pain at the empty stable where Alex used to live.

At first, of course, it had been wonderful. Neither he nor Dora told each other they’d shared their beds with others by tacit agreement, and as he hesitantly slipped into the sheets beside her it was every dream he’d ever had while he was gone coming true.

Then, of course, the rows slowly started up again. Rows about how the farm should be run, which horses they should take, and of course money, of which Dora had plenty in her own right. After three years the relationship couldn’t take any more – they didn’t even talk over breakfast for fear of starting the day wrong and upsetting Jen, who was still at school – and Dora suggested that she move back to her Uncle’s house and drive or ride over to Follyfoot every day to work.

“I’ll get us the money,” she said. “I’ll find lots more people who will pay to have their horses here. You run the yard and the bills. As manager. Paid manager.”

“You’ll find lots more people who will pay,” Steve jeered. “Come off it, Dora, you could never resist a charity case. We’ll be just as badly off. Head just above water, like we’ve always been.”

“I’ll do it, you’ll see,” she said stubbornly. And while the charity cases still hobbled through Follyfoot’s gates, the racehorses came too. She shamelessly drew on her Uncle’s network of old-boy cronies, putting on her poshest clothes and poshest voice, working the system as Steve couldn’t.

And that, thought Steve, was that. She’d shown a maturity he wouldn’t have believed, had flirted for England – or Follyfoot, really - with trainers throughout the county and beyond, and turned the place around financially, once and for all. Sneaking another glance at her, he wished they could bridge their personal gap again. He knew little of her life outside Follyfoot these days.

Dora could have told him, if she chose, it was deadly simple. Every afternoon, before dinner, she left Follyfoot and drove back to the Colonel’s house, where she sat with her ailing 85-year-old uncle for an hour while his live-in housekeeper prepared the evening meal. After dinner she and Uncle Geoffrey would watch a bit of television together, or simply talk – he in his now quavery, halting voice – then she would go to bed in her elegant bedroom upstairs with a book for company. No men; there hadn’t been anyone since Steve was in Australia, when she’d had an unsatisfactory fling with a sturdy county man whose landholdings were, she discovered, much nicer than his charm or personality.

Uncle Geoffrey was wheelchair-bound these days. The old shrapnel wound that had plagued him since World War II was taking its toll. Some days he could walk with sticks, but most of the time he used the chair, sitting in the conservatory with the weak sun on his face, dozing and dreaming of the days when he used to ride and hunt.

Rarely did they entertain, as the Colonel wasn’t up to big dinners and lots of people. “You should go out more, m’dear,” he’d tell Dora at least once a week, as he did that night when she’d changed out of her horsy clothes into something cleaner and joined him by the fire.

“I don’t want to, Uncle,” Dora said sincerely.

“You’ll end up an old curmudgeon like me.”

“No, I won’t,” she smiled. “Jen and Jake will see to that.”

“You should be with Steve, not me.”

“Steve doesn’t need me. You do.”

“He does, you know.” The Colonel chewed on the pipe he wasn’t allowed light up any more. “You can see it by the way he still looks at you. For God’s sake girl, you’re still young –“

“In my early fifties, thank you!”

“That’s young. Try being eighty five. Go to him, Dora. You’ve been on and off for thirty years, and you two do belong together, no matter what anyone else says, or the fights you have. You fight out of love, not hate, and you know it.”

“What do you mean, Uncle, fight out of love?” She sipped her gin and tonic, relishing the authority of the gin after another tough day trying to master the PC.

“Love for Follyfoot, love for your future. You both want to make it right and secure. Been doing that for thirty years. Now it IS secure, the farm is making money, you’ve got some good connections in the horse world. Stop fighting, Dora, and for once and for all, make it work between you.”

“It’s too late, Uncle,” she said softly and sadly. “We’ve grown too far apart. Steve’s a good manager, and I think he’d prefer to be a manager than my partner in life. At least this way we’ll have a good yard to pass onto Jake and Jennifer.”

“Think of yourself, too, Dora, not just your children.” He chomped on his pipe. “Or one day you’ll turn around and discover you’re eighty five.” He glumly put the pipe on his knee. “Wish I could fill the damned thing with tobacco.”

“And what about you, Uncle? You’d be awfully lonely if I moved back with Steve.”

“I told you, Dora. Think of yourself. I’ve lived alone most of my adult life; living alone gives you the right to enjoy being a curmudgeon. Just think, I can’t be my grumpy self when you’re around.” He gave her his familiar crooked grin.

As she ate the delicate lamb chops and carefully cooked, plain vegetables – the Colonel didn’t have much of an appetite these days and preferred simple food – she envisaged the scene at Follyfoot, where Steve and Slugger would be sitting down to one of Steve’s stews or pies. Later, after they’d had a can of lager each in front of the telly, Steve would help Slugger up the stairs to bed, and would himself go to the bedroom they’d shared for many years with the view over the yard. She felt an awful pang for Follyfoot, the tiny living room in the cottage, that bedroom that had been her own. Living here in luxury at her Uncle’s was pleasant enough – it was a house most women would kill to live in, with its antiques, beautiful Persian carpets, priceless paintings and spacious rooms – but her heart was out at the farm.

But, as she’d told the Colonel, it was too late now. She sipped her burgundy in silence.

“Time to watch Dalziel & Pascoe, eh,” the Colonel said, wheeling his chair from the table. Ten minutes later he was asleep in front of the television, his mouth open, his snores regular, and Dora turned her attention from murder on the moors and looked over the black hills towards the horses and home.

* * *

Apart from his looks and penchant for dodgy deals, Reggie Stryker had inherited something else from his dad – a habit for singing in the stables. Unlike Ron, he didn’t play a guitar, but usually had a CD Walkman hanging from his jeans.

Today, though, he showed Dora his latest toy. “Dad’s just got them in stock. It’s an iPod. You download MP3s from the net onto it.”

“Reggie, I didn’t understand a single word of that.”

“Where have you been, Dora?”

“I’ve just got the hang of email and I’m learning internet banking.”

“Oooh, get you! Seriously, Dora, it’s dead easy. I know some great P2P sites, can get you downloading music in no time. Listen.” Reggie thrust the headphones at her and Dora heard a cacophony that made her wrinkle her nose.

“Can you get any decent music on the net?”

“Wot you mean? This is Good Charlotte, woman! I know, you’d rather the Beatles, wouldn’t you? Or some seventies band, let’s see… The Sweet? Here, I downloaded this for Dad, just for a lark.” He fidgeted with his iPod and Dora found herself listening to Fox on the Run.

It brought back memories of summer nights at village pubs, when she and Steve were head over heels in love, and Jennifer and Jake far from even being a twinkle in her eye.

“Too many memories,” she said softly, and handed the headphones back, a wistful smile softening her face.

“My dad was head over heels for you years ago, you know,” Reggie said. “I can see why, when you smile like that.”

“Get on with you!” Dora gave him a playful shove. “You’re just like your Dad, using music to slack off work.”

“Yes, sir, wotever you say, sir!” Reggie saluted and ambled back to his assigned task, which was re-staining the stable doors on the new block before the six racehorses arrived in a few days’ time. It was a slow job, as Reggie painted in time to the music, and he’d obviously decided to listen to ballads instead.

Dora shook her head. She and Ron… it had even less chance of working than she and Steve, for she’d only ever loved Ron as a brother and wasn’t into incest. They’d shared lots of laughs, but never more than an innocent flirt or quick kiss on the cheek.

She stretched. It had been another morning in the office on the telephone, keeping up the contacts on the old-boy network. And keeping an eye on Slugger, whose cough was nastier this morning. She wanted him to see a doctor but Slugger had a horror of doctors; he said they’d want to put him in a home and he’d much sooner die in his bed here. Besides, he had his pills, didn’t he? Stop worrying, he told her.

Idly she looked into Hobnob’s stable. The fat pony wasn’t there, and the floor had been cleared of all straw and smelt of drying disinfectant.

“Steve!” she called.

Sighing, Steve wandered down from the barn. “What?”

“Where’s Hobnob? Is he out in the field? I didn’t see him earlier.”

“I sold him two days ago. They picked him up this morning, before you arrived.”

Dora frowned. “What do you mean, sold him? To whom?”

“To a very nice family who have a small holding and two children who needed a pony like Hobnob to learn on,” Steve said patiently, waiting for the explosion and preparing to stop it in its tracks. “Now, Dora, I’m the manager, aren’t I? I run the yard. You get the posh punters in. That’s how it works in your brave new world, isn’t it?”

“But we should discuss it if you’re going to sell one of the horses!”

“Why? So you can say no? And never let me forget you’re the owner and I’m the hired help?”

“Steve, it’s not like that!”

“Isn’t it? You’re paying me.”

“Would you rather I didn’t?”

“I’d rather we were partners – like we used to be,” Steve blurted out before he could stop himself. “You and I and our dream.”

Dora softened. “That’s all it was, though, wasn’t it? A dream. We proved it didn’t work. Again and again.” She paused, dredging up the courage to suggest they give it one more try, because despite everything she still had feelings for him and perhaps he still had feelings for her…

But it was too late. Steve’s face blackened while Dora composed her sentence in her head. “Yeah, you’re right. You’re always right, aren’t you, Dora?” He spun on his heel and stomped back to the barn.

“Steve! Wait!” She ran after him, pulling at his sleeve. “I was going to suggest we try again.”

“Oh yeah? Well, this time, you really ARE right. It didn’t work then, why should it work now, when we don’t even have the kids at home to hold us together? I’m happy being the hired help, Dora, I’m in a role I understand. Now let me get on with it.” He shook her free, cursing himself for his temper, cursing her for saying what she did when she did. A chance to fix things…and as usual he stuffed it up.

Dora swore at his retreating back, longing to go after him and shake his sinewy shoulders and make him listen, but knowing from experience that wouldn’t work either. Neither would putting her arms around him, burying her fingers in that still thick hair and kissing him. There was a time THAT would have worked! The last time she had felt Steve’s lips on her own was more years ago than she cared to remember.

Instead she went into the cottage and made lunch with a lot more noise than was necessary.

“Everything OK, girl?” Slugger shuffled into the kitchen and sat at the table with a sigh of relief.

“It’s just Steve,” she said shortly, wielding a large knife with a dangerous flourish as she cut slices of bread.

“Just Steve, she says. It’s always just Steve. You should have married him, you know, not just lived with him. Marriage makes a relationship stronger.”

Dora gave a bitter laugh. “We’d be divorced by now, Slugs!”

“Dunno about that. He’s still here, isn’t he? And so are you. Just not in the same bedroom. Patch it up, Dora. It’s worth it.”

“I just tried, and made a total botch of it.”

Slugger snorted. “Try harder. You were never a quitter.”

“Nor is he, and he’s determined not to give it a go,” Dora sighed.

“Young men and their pride,” mused Slugger, and Dora grinned to hear Steve still described as ‘young’. “Listen, girl, I’m not gettin’ any younger, and I want to see you two together and makin’ a go of it before I die.”

“I hope you’re planning to live a very long time, then, Slugs.”

“Serious, luv. You two are the kids I never ‘ad. Make an old man happy, will you?” He gave another of his loud, hacking coughs, doubling over in his chair, and panted for breath afterwards.

“I wish you’d let me take you to the doctor.”

“Don’t want no quacks puttin’ me in hospitals or homes. One way trip to the otherworld, that is. What’s for lunch?”

Steve wouldn’t talk to Dora at all during lunch, which was punctuated by long and frustrated sighs from Steve and Dora and blue jokes from Reggie.

“Right,” said Steve, wiping around his soup bowl with a crust of bread. “Back to work for me. Reggie, when you’ve finished staining those doors, you can help me with the new load of hay.” He pushed his chair back, giving Slugger a friendly pat on the shoulder.

“Steve, wait, we have to talk!” Dora called after him.

“Not now!” he called back, and strode off at top speed, Reggie at his heels, shoving a last piece of bread in his mouth and spilling his mug of tea as he tried keep up.

“See?” Dora said to Slugger.

“You gotta pick your moment, girl. Wait until work’s over, and it’s time to relax.” With that Slugger tipped back his chair, folded his arms over his stomach and closed his eyes.

Dora looked at him affectionately. She couldn’t imagine Follyfoot without him; he was the lynchpin that held them all together. Quietly she gathered the plates and put them in the dishwasher she’d had installed years before, and crept back to the office.

Later in the day, when darkness had closed in by five, the ponies brought in from the field, all horses had been fed their evening feed, and Reggie had thundered away from the farm in his little van with the souped-up exhaust, Dora shut down the computer – she’d discovered a very interesting equine diseases website – pulled on her coat, and grabbed her bag and keys.

The lights were still on in the stable yard, so Steve was out there somewhere.

She found him in the tackroom, making space for the plethora of headcollars and rugs the racehorses would bring with them.

“Steve, can’t we talk?”

In the far shadows of the poorly lit room, his hair looked black instead of grey, and his face was softened by the light; he looked like the Steve she had fallen in love with, long, long ago.

“Why? We’ve talked before. Why should this time be any different?”

“Because of Slugger. He’s not well, Steve.”

“I know. I put him to bed each night. I hear him coughing at all hours. He won’t see a doctor.”

“What can we do? He HAS to see a doctor, I’m sure his heart pills aren’t strong enough. Or he needs fluid tablets. Have you seen how puffy his hands are getting?”

“If he goes to hospital or a home, he’ll give up hope. He’s a stubborn old man, Dora. We both know that.”

“If he was a horse, you’d call in the vet. So would I. Steve, Slugger loves us. We’re his family. As his family, we should do what we can. He mightn’t have to go to hospital, and he’ll go to a home over my dead body. But let me phone the doctor tomorrow.”

“You’re right.” Steve gave a wry smile. “I mean it nicely this time.”

That smile gave her hope. “Slugger said something to me at lunchtime, Steve. He wants to see us make a go of it together again before he dies. Make him a happy old man, he said.”

“So we should try again… just to please Slugger?” Steve raised his eyebrows. “Dora, if we try to patch it up, it should be for us. Not anyone else.”

“’If’… do you mean you’d try?” Dora whispered.

“I don’t know,” Steve said flatly. “You’re still the most beautiful woman I’ve ever met, and we’ve got Follyfoot as part of our bond, but our relationship has always been flawed. We both know that.” He threw a pile of old rugs into one corner, sending motes of dust swirling in front of the bare lightbulb.

“But there’s always been something there,” Dora persisted.

“Oh, yes, undeniably. We’ve always been attracted to each other. But is it enough?”

“Look at this place,” Dora said. “Follyfoot. Could either of us have kept it going on our own? It’s both of us, Steve. We’re finally making a profit with the place, but it’s both of us.”

“Took long enough to work out how to make a profit,” Steve grunted, heaving another lot of rugs.

“Steve.” Dora took a deep breath. “I miss you. I miss living here. I miss sharing your bed, and your laughter, and your jokes, and you. I still love you, you know. Fights or no fights.”

She waited; she couldn’t see his face in the darkness. She said: “Do you still love me?”

Another rug hit the pile. “Ah, but is love enough to overcome all our differences? It hasn’t been in the past, Dora.”

“You didn’t answer my question.” Dora’s heart thudded.

“No, I didn’t. The thing is, I just don’t know any more.”

It was answer enough. Dora spun on her heel, stormed out of the tack room and over to her Land Rover Discovery. As Steve ran after her, she roared out of the yard and down the hill, blinking to keep the tears away.

* * *

Dora tossed and turned. She should never have gone to the tackroom. That was it – all hope lost. When a man said he didn’t know whether he loved a woman, he meant he didn’t, he was just too kind or polite to say so.

The bed was big and lonely; maybe she should get a cat to share it with.

Outside even the owls had gone to bed. She glanced at her clock. 3am. She groaned. She wouldn’t go to Follyfoot later in the morning, she decided. If Steve was happy in his blasted role as blasted manager, he didn’t need her. And after that talk in the tackroom she didn’t feel like facing him. She’d spend the day catching up on sleep and talking to Uncle Geoffrey.

Dora pulled the covers close around her chin, shivering even though she was warm. She felt like a spurned teenager all over again. Why didn’t older people tell you that you’d still feel the same inside at fifty as you did at eighteen?

The mobile phone beside her bed burst into a shrill ring, shattering the quietness of the Colonel’s big house. Dora pounced on it.

The caller was “Follyfoot”. Steve, then. Apologising? Saying he loved her after all?

Dora pressed the Talk button and said hesitantly, “Steve?”

“Dora.” His voice was urgent. “Dora, it’s Slugger. I’ve called an ambulance. Come quickly…”

“I’m on my way.” She was wide awake in an instant.

She pulled jeans on over her nightie, found her warmest sweater and cosy boots, and made her way silently down the huge round staircase and out to her car.

By the time she got to Follyfoot the ambulance either hadn’t arrived or had already gone. The lights were ablaze in the cottage and she dimly registered that Ron’s new model MG was parked skewiff in the yard, much as his old motorbike used to be.

She dashed upstairs to Slugger’s room, where Steve and Ron were keeping a vigil by the old man’s bedside.

Slugger’s breathing was ragged and uneven. Great gasping breaths then nothing for far too long…then another heave of his chest.

“Where’s the bloody ambulance?” muttered Steve. “Ron, can you give them a call and make sure they’re on the way?”

“Doan’ go,” Slugger said weakly. “Stay here, young Stryker. Sod th’ ambulance. Dora?”

“I’m here, Slugs.” She sat on the side of the bed and took one of his hands in both her own. It was icy.

“Steve?”

“Right here, Slugger.” He took the other hand.

“Look after this place, you two.” He swallowed, breathed heavily, winced in pain. “And be happy.”

Steve caught Dora’s eye. “We will, Slugs,” he said gently. “But you’re not going anywhere just yet, are you? We’ll get you fixed up and back here in no time, burning bacon for us…”

His voice dropped away. Slugger’s chest no longer heaved. The room was quiet.

“Jesus,” said Ron bleakly, blinking rapidly. “Slugs?” Tenderly he tapped the old man’s cheek, as he used to do in play, but this time Slugger didn’t feint a punch at him.

Dora crumpled to the floor, her face in her hands, and Steve was at her side in a second, pulling her onto his knees and cradling her in his arms. For the first time since Alex died, he cried too, and this time Slugger’s hand didn’t fall gently onto his shoulder.

Ron said in a choked little voice, “I’ll give that ambulance wot for when it comes,” and they heard his footsteps go downstairs and then a great wailing cry as Ron mourned his best mate.

“Ssh, darling,” Steve whispered as he fought to control his own tears. Slugger looked peaceful, the natural curve of his mouth forming that slight smile that mocked the world and found a joke in everything.

Dora cried for Slugger, for the times they’d had and the years that had been and that ones that could have still been to come. “Stubborn old man,” she gasped, wiping her face on her sleeve for the fifth time.

Steve pulled her to her feet as the ambulance siren sounded outside. “Come on, girl,” he said tenderly, brushing the tears from her cheeks with gentle thumbs. “There’s nothing more we can do here.”

“Except this.” Dora leant over and kissed Slugger’s still cheek, and Steve did the same.

Numbly she let him lead her down the stairs and into the living room, where Ron had relit the fire. Ron himself sat in one of the easy chairs, looking ten years older, his halo of grey hair standing in tufts around the side of his head. “Jesus, Slugger,” he said. “I kept tellin’ the old bugger to see a quack, said I’d even go with ‘im to make sure they didn’t pack him into ‘ospital.” His hands shook as he poured himself a Scotch and knocked it back in one gulp.

Steve held a still-trembling Dora tight, and dropped a kiss on her hair, as he used to.

“You don’t have to pretend for Slugger’s sake,” Dora whispered. “He’s not here –“ she gulped “- any more.”

“I’m not pretending,” Steve whispered back. How long had it been since he’d held her like this? Too long. Be happy, Slugger had said. Oh, he intended to try, he and Dora. Not just to make an old man very happy, but because, after all, they were each other’s destiny. If he hadn’t known in the tackroom, he knew now. Part of his heart was breaking for Slugger, whom he loved dearly, the other flying high in the sheer wonder of having Dora in his arms.

* * *

“God, what a horrible day!” The Colonel saw Slugger’s sister’s children off and shuffled back into the kitchen on his two sticks. “I hate funerals. The next will be my own, I should think, so I shan’t care on that day.”

“Uncle, don’t say that!” Dora helped him onto one of the kitchen chairs. He had aged awfully in the four days since Slugger died; his face was pale and drawn, harsh lines carving it from his mouth to his chin. “You’ve got years yet.”

“I bet you said that to Slugger, too. I can’t believe he’s gone. We’d been friends for sixty years, he and I.” He helped himself to the Scotch.

“Should you be drinking that?”

“Today, I don’t really care.” Unlike Ron, who’d gulped his third, the Colonel sipped it appreciatively.

“I hope one of you lot is going to be sober enough to drive me home,” he said.

“I will. I can’t drink,” Debbie offered, patting her stomach. To everyone’s surprise including her own, Stryker number seven was in the production phase, she’d discovered only the week before.

Jennifer, unable to resist the yard, had wandered out to the horses, with Jake in tow. Dora watched them through the window, examining the racehorses which had arrived the day before, clapping shiny necks and opening obliging mouths.

She noticed the Scotch was getting low and went in search of a new bottle, and found Steve in the living room looking sadly at a photo of himself, Dora, Ron, Slugger and the Colonel taken 30 years ago.

“Are you going to stay?” she said softly.

“Course I am!” Steve put the photo back on the mantelpiece. “Why do you say that?”

“Well, you’ve gone before. Slugger held us all together, you know. Without him, is there enough here to make you want to stay and give it another try?”

“Silly girl. Of course there is. There’s you and I. We’ve wasted enough time these last few years. I don’t want to waste any more – do you?”

“Oh, no. I don’t.”

They’d barely had the chance to speak since Slugger died; it had been a rush organising the funeral with Slugger’s family, and the Colonel had taken his old friend’s death badly and had taken to his bed, with Dora at his side until today. She’d been busy with the Colonel and also Jennifer and Jake, who had returned from opposite ends of the country and were staying at the Colonel’s.

Hesitantly she touched his shoulder, then her arms were around him and his lips were on hers for the first time in years, exploring the softness of Dora’s mouth with a hunger that sent a shiver down her spine.

“Gawd, young love. And at a funeral an’ all.”

They jumped apart at Ron’s voice. Ron grinned. “Don’t let me stop you. I was only after the Scotch. Seriously, good to see you two patching things up. Slugger would’ve been ‘appy to see it.” He clapped Steve’s shoulder and picked up the bottle from the drinks cabinet before heading back to the kitchen.

“Shall I move my things back here?” Dora said quietly.

“Please,” said Steve. “’Cos I don’t feel happy living in the big house with the Colonel and his housekeeper.”

“My place is here, always has been,” Dora said. “With you.”

Steve kissed her again. “We’ve got a lot to catch up on, you and I. A lot of rebuilding, a lot of starting again.”

Jennifer burst into the room, her swirly black skirt flipping up around her bovver boots. Her eyes gaped at the sight of her parents in a clinch – something that hadn’t happened since she was a schoolgirl. She grinned. “Mum! Dad! There’s a guy pulled up with a horse in a trailer…”

Steve and Dora exchanged glances. Of all the bad timing! Today of all days!

It was Hobnob. The family had brought him back because he kept escaping and getting onto the road, despite fixing the gate and the fences, aside from which he’d bitten the father on the hand once or twice when he was too slow putting out the feed. The two children were crying, Hobnob was whinnying, the thoroughbreds were answering, and the mother was trying to drown the racket out by turning up the CD player in the car, so the Cranberries were wailing all over the valley.

“Sorry,” said the man, “but he’s a bit too much to handle. We didn’t know ponies were this much trouble. We’ve decided to get a cat instead.” He looked around. “Where will you put him? You look pretty full.”

Steve sighed. “We’ll find a place. We always do. Always will.”

The donkey enclosure was empty, as Dora pointed out; Bubble and Squeak had long been grazing in the Elysian fields. She glanced over…and up at the Lightning Tree, where the first green shoots, tiny, almost invisible, caught the afternoon sun, many of them, far more than last year.

It was going to be alright this time, it really was. Dora took Hobnob’s halter and began leading him across the yard.

The end