One Hundred and Four Horses. Mandy Retzlaff

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      On one particular morning, driving to pick up Paul at school, I was late. Even the traffic in the city of Harare seemed to know it, slowing down and jamming at every intersection I tried to drive through, as if deliberately trying to vex me. As I checked and rechecked the time, my only consolation was that Paul knew the kind of life we led too well; he wouldn’t be expecting me to be right on schedule.

      He was waiting at the bus stop in a scuffed-up school uniform when I arrived, at five feet tall an image of his father in miniature. Like his father, he scowled at me, but, like his father, he didn’t mean it.

      Also like his father, Paul loved all animals. My eye caught something squirming under the folds of his school blazer.

      “His name’s Fuzzy,” Paul said, sliding into the front seat. The tiny head of a puppy, a Jack Russell crossed with a Maltese poodle, poked its head out of the top of his collar, inspected me with mischievous eyes, and then ducked back to wriggle against Paul’s chest. “He’s saying hello.”

      “Darling, where …”

      I had taken off into traffic, my eyes flitting between the road and this ball of fur that Paul was now feeding the end of an ice cream cone from his pocket. From somewhere, horns blared. I looked up, managing to correct my course just in time.

      “Remember when school gave me Imprevu?”

      Actually, we had paid a fortune for Imprevu. She was a beautiful bay mare, extremely eager, responsive, and exciting to ride, and she would be ridden by Paul and Pat regularly after Frisky died. She had belonged to the riding school, but they were only too pleased to send her to Crofton and receive a princely payment in return.

      “Well, it was the same thing. My teacher gave him to me.”

      “Just gave him to you?”

      “He knows how much we like animals.”

      I had to smile.

      “Look over your shoulder, Paul.”

      Paul looked over his shoulder, Fuzzy craning his neck the same way. On the backseat sat a crate with two little Scotties peeking out. Each of them wore a perfect little tartan bow, and their tiny black eyes considered Fuzzy carefully.

      “I’ve just picked them up,” I said. “Aren’t they adorable?”

      “Mum!” Paul exclaimed. “You’re just like Dad!”

      “Don’t start on that. Your father’s much worse than me …”

      Paul was fixated on the box of scrabbling pups. I had long been fascinated by Scotties. They looked perfectly adorable, with black eyes like the ones in the face of a teddy bear. Well, if Pat could go around collecting turkeys and horses and sheep, I had to be allowed a little indulgence of my own. Perhaps it was my husband’s madness rubbing off on me.

      Fuzzy made a spirited squirm out of Paul’s arms and dropped into the backseat with the other pups.

      “Have you told Dad?” asked Paul.

      “Let’s keep it quiet for a while.” I grinned. “I’ve been promising him another Great Dane …”

      Of all our children, Paul was the most eager to live a life in the saddle. Imprevu, the mare he had brought home from school, was similar to Frisky in many ways. She required an experienced hand and was ridden only by Paul and Pat. Paul experienced the same joy in saddling her up and exploring our farm as Pat had as a boy with Frisky.

      Jay did not have the same passion for horses but loved the bush and spent his time roaming the farm with his best friend, Henry, hunting and birding—but I would often see Kate marveling at her father in Frisky’s saddle, or Paul as he took off on Imprevu, kicking up dust as they cantered along the winding farm tracks. Soon, it would come time for her to learn to ride, and she would do it with the very same partner with whom Pat had spent those idyllic years of his own childhood.

      When Kate was on Frisky’s back, everything seemed to come together at Crofton. I would see her sitting in the saddle, her father just behind her, Kate’s hands nestled inside his, with the reins folded up in between. She would tug and tease at the reins and, in return, Frisky would obey the simplest commands. Somehow, she seemed to know that this was Pat’s daughter on her back, and she treated her with such kindness, such simple charity, that it pulled at my heartstrings to see it. In her old age, Frisky had lost the mischievous, flighty temperament of her earlier days—but there wasn’t a thing she wouldn’t do for Pat, or in turn for little Kate.

      Kate took to riding like her father and eldest brother before her. She was a natural, and soon she would join Paul and Pat at the local equestrian events and paper chases. Seeing her in Frisky’s saddle, I often thought back to that cheeky little pony Ticky and how he had put me off horses when I was a girl. I wondered what I might have been like if I had had the same childhood as Pat, running wild on a Rhodesian farm with a beloved horse underneath me.

      One morning, Pat and I saddled up Frisky and three other horses and set out with Jay and Kate to check the fences around the farm. The ride was long, and the sun was blistering overhead. As we approached the Munwa River, Jay reined in and gestured for Kate to do the same. They were looking, almost longingly, at the crystal waters. Jay gave me the same pleading look I’d seen before.

      “Can we go for a swim?”

      The horses, too, looked as if they needed a rest, so we dismounted and Pat held the reins of all the horses while I helped Jay and Kate undress.

      As the children were preparing to run into the waters, Pat loosened his hold on the reins—but Frisky, covered in a sheen of glistening sweat, only looked nervously at the riverbank, refusing to go near. Pat and I exchanged a curious look and no sooner had we done so than Frisky released a desperate whinny and began to stamp her feet.

      Pat, as he had done ever since he was a young boy, put his arms around Frisky, patting her neck and rubbing her flank, whispering to her so that she might calm down. Yet, no matter how much he consoled her, Frisky could not be calmed. As Jay and Kate scrambled out of their socks and headed for the water, she picked up her front hooves and smashed them back down. There was something desperate, almost pleading, rolling in the back of her throat.

      I turned to Jay and Kate. They were almost at the water’s edge. Only then did I see what Frisky had seen. The dark eyes of a crocodile glimmered menacingly, just above the surface of the water.

      Yelling for Pat, I hurtled down to the riverbank and grabbed Jay and Kate to drag them back. From the water, the croc looked at us, shifting its malevolent eyes.

      Back at Frisky’s side, listening to her gather her composure, I shuddered.

      “No swimming today,” I said.

      Terrified at what might have happened, we hastily turned the horses from the Munwa River to make the ride back home, but for days afterward I could not stop imagining the look of terror in Frisky’s eyes: not that anything might happen to her, but that something terrible might befall one of our children. It is not for nothing that ­people say they can see keen intelligence shimmering in a horse’s eyes. If I had never seen it before, Frisky was the one to teach me that lesson: the horse sees, the horse knows, the horse cares and remembers. We think we are their СКАЧАТЬ