Seahorses Are Real by Zillah Bethell Read Free Book Online Page B

appointment cards – and you’ll grow forearms like Popeye. Amazing what you believed in, thought Marly, stepping briskly up West Hill, her feet tapping out the rhythm of sea green mushy pea green jelly bean green greens, when you lost your faith in everything else. (Ivy chewing on pineapple skins, wrinkling like a crocodile; purple fingers mashing ’em up, smiling a crocodile smile.)
    She swept in through the stained-glass porch, past the receptionist who stank of scent and always said: ‘May our wishes come true this month, this week, this afternoon’; and went to sit on the one remaining chair in the hallway, the other being occupied, astonishingly, by a delicate little dark-haired girl reading Black Beauty . Marly felt like saying, as she perched, clumsy, old and ridiculous, beside her, that the remainder bookshop in town sold hundreds of horse books – the Black Stallion series for a start. She knew because David brought one back for her each week wrapped up in a brown paper bag.... Only a quid, they were brilliant… about a boy who got stranded on an island with a horse; he fed him carrageen (it’s a seaweed) and learnt to ride bareback, his arms straight out like an aeroplane, into the waves.... But instead she sat there silent and staring at sunshine messages through superglued glasses, trying not to sneeze at all the scent in the air and listening to Terry’s voice coming from one of the darkly, discreetly, closely kept doors. What a danger his soul must be, she thought, privy to a hundred-and-one little secrets. What did he do all day with those fears, anxieties, sores and complaints? Did he feed off them in the thick, foetid air, a vitiligoed mushroom in a dark space; or did he leave them there, a shadowy mantle to be put on, put down and passed along, like some modern day Elijah or John the Baptist, his burden the psyche, sciatica, haemorrhoids, the curse.... She blinked at the sunshine through blue-tacked glasses, a migratory bird, twitchy, wanting to be off; overly conscious of the girl at her side and wondering why the longer the silence, the harder it was to break. The girl coughed and turned a page; and Marly shuffled uneasily around in her seat, trying to catch her eye so that it wouldn’t seem so abrupt when she asked, a little stupidly: is that Black Beauty ?
    â€˜Is that Black Beauty ?’ at last, out loud.
    â€˜Yes.’ The girl seemed quite unsurprised to be asked, totally composed and at ease with Marly’s proximity.
    â€˜Oh, that’s a good book.’ How easy it was. ‘I love that book.’
    â€˜I’ve only just started reading it,’ the girl explained, indicating the page she was on.
    â€˜It’s a good book,’ Marly repeated. ‘The Black Stallion books are good too. Have you read any of them?’
    â€˜No.’ The girl’s eyelashes splashed against her cheek. The tip of her nose, Marly noticed, was freckled.
    â€˜They’re very good as well.... Have you got a horse?’
    â€˜No... but I have riding lessons.’ Her eyes lit up. ‘I ride a horse called Tarka.’
    â€˜Oh,’ smiled Marly. ‘What’s he like?’
    â€˜He’s a chestnut with a sock,’ the girl announced proudly. ‘He can jump as high as three foot six!’
    â€˜That’s brilliant,’ Marly enthused; and was about to get into a good old discussion of dapple greys, blue roans, cavaletti and palominos when the door opened and Terry came out saying ‘You’ll feel like a new woman,’ to a little, old, sad-looking woman in a grey suit who disappeared through the stained-glass porch. He beckoned Marly in.
    Smiling an apology at the girl, she went into the bay-windowed room to her seat in front of the old piano, wondering, as she always did, if he ever gave anyone a tune, for healing purposes of course. ( Give us a tune, said the old Dad. Can you play Chopsticks, Érotique, the Waltz