Blind Beauty by K M Peyton Read Free Book Online Page A

early morning feeds. Tessa went in to Buffoon and threw her arms round his neck. He turned to her with gentle surprise. Lucky butted her for a titbit, too small to reach Buffoon’s feed in the manger. This is where I belong, Tessa knew, against all logic. She buried her face in Buffoon’s moth-eaten mane.
    â€œYou are mine,” she said. “My beauty. I shall never be parted from you.”
    Even as she said it, she knew she was crazy. It wasn’t true and never could be but she would die first before she changed her mind.
    When Gilly came out Buffoon was mucked out and Tessa was grooming with her sleeves rolled up.
    â€œHey, what’s bitten you?” she said.
    Tessa did not deign to reply.
    In the tack-room, Buffoon’s gear was polished and shining, standing out from the rest of the grubby tack. Soon his grooming brushes were washed and laid out in the sun to dry. Nobody said anything, but they all noticed.
    When the horses went out on exercise, Gilly rode Buffoon, and Tessa watched them go with light in her eyes. She turned Lucky out into the small paddock behind the stables and he settled to grazing, knowing that his friend would be back in a couple of hours. Tessa tidied the loosebox, swept the yard, and went to the manège when Jimmy was just coming out with a young horse. Jimmy was the only one Tessa liked.
    She hung around while he untacked the horse, and took the gear back to the tack-room for him. When she returned, he was washing the horse down with the hose. Walter leapt around, dodging the jet of water. Tessa knew that when Jimmy had finished he would put the horse away, sit on the hay bales and roll a cigarette. Over his head was an ancient notice that said “No Smoking”. Tessa sat on a hay bale, waiting.
    â€œHi,” he said, quite amicably.
    He sat down and got out the cigarette papers, pulled one out.
    â€œI want to learn to ride,” Tessa said.
    Jimmy got out the tobacco and picked out a meagre ration of shreds.
    â€œI want to ride Buffoon.”
    Jimmy didn’t say anything. Tessa then remembered Gilly saying once that Jimmy never gave lessons. Well, what else could she do but ask? No one else would teach her. She sat staring at the ground, waiting.
    Jimmy lit his cigarette and took a pull. He had a weather-beaten face and hair that grew close and curling to his head. His eyes were very blue and direct. Tessa supposed she liked him best because he never criticized, never said much at all, just did his own thing. He had a kind way of looking, with a slight smile. Peter his brother was much more excitable and short-tempered, and had made his dislike of Tessa quite plain. Unlike Jimmy.
    At last Jimmy said, “Change of heart, eh?”
    â€œYes.”
    Jimmy stared into space for a bit, inhaled on his scrappy cigarette and eventually said, “This afternoon, if you like. Half an hour. See how you go.”
    Tessa bit her lip, holding back an impulse to leap up and hug him.
    â€œYes,” she said.
    The stables were quiet in the afternoon after the midday feed. Gilly went home for a couple of hours, Peter went off to his office, or the cows, old Arthur went to sleep. Tessa was there waiting long before Jimmy came. She thought he had forgotten, her heart was pounding. But he came soundlessly round the corner of the barn, saw her and smiled.
    He used one of his young horses, a thoroughbred, but put it on a lunge-rein in the manège. When Tessa got up, it all came back to her, the sight of the long neck ahead and the perky ears, the slab of shoulder working smoothly, the gleaming coat sliding over bone and muscle. Declan had thrown her up on lots of horses once, old ones and young ones, and the familiarity soothed her. She knew she would be good.
    â€œYou’re a natural,” Jimmy said.
    By the end of the half-hour she was rising to the trot with only a few misses.
    â€œI can’t teach anyway,” Jimmy said. “It’s up to