About to Fall

A thick fog envelops Hyde Park as I ride my ginger pony around the deserted kiosk at Speakers’ Corner. Winter Wonderland closed last week, leaving its muddy footprint stamped on the green, bereft of roller coasters, mulled wine and screaming kids. I’ve only met one runner. No other masochist wants to face the misery of the English winter, this damp cold that sinks right into your bones. The horses are mad with it; I can feel Dudley bursting to fuck off down the sandtrack, which is for the horses but being used by the runner. Fuckwit.

Turning Dudley onto the track running along The Serpentine, I collect my reins, close my legs on his sides and transition to trot. On the water, the grey silhouette of an approaching swan darkens then fades again beyond the haze.

If you see the Black Swan, somebody’s gonna fall. Ridiculous, that. But it’s what everyone started to say, staff and kids, and it seems to be true. Adam saw it last Saturday and a kid fell off and broke his arm, and before that, Annie was bucked off Spencer, right onto the concrete. Snapped her collarbone clean in two. And she’s a better rider than me. Nat, too, and she was dragged across Bayswater Road, holding onto the reins of two panicking horses with her foot stuck in the stirrup. Always after somebody saw the swan—

I’m sure they made it all up, this story of the black swan. Yet, whenever the ponies are charged like shaken soda, I don’t dare look at the lake.

No contract, no sick pay.

The cold stings and I pull my scarf into my face before pushing it back down. Stables are supposed to smell like sweet hay, carrots and horse sweat, something you wish you could bottle and snort when you’re stressed. Not ours. Crammed into a Victorian coach house on Bathurst Mews, it stinks of stagnant piss and horseshit, a stench that doesn’t leave even though we scrape the drains every week, elbow-deep in the gunk. It permeates all my clothes, stinking up the tube when I get on it.

And you’d think being a riding instructor – unqualified, but still – in the heart of London is a glamorous job.

Disembodied hoofbeats bring me back from my thoughts, the hard clips and clops of being shod on all fours approaching on concrete. Dudley picks his head up, ears pinned forwards. The reins go weightless in my hands and his muscles tense under me. I bring him back to walk.

A tall black form emerges from the fogged-out end of the path—a cavalry horse trotting along The Serpentine sans rider. It’s not the first time I’ve met one of them on the loose, with or without their useless rider still bouncing in the saddle. They only know how to cosplay a rider, those twats, and only one from a hundred years ago: tweed jacket and cream breeches, boots too shiny and new.

They have nice horses, though. Proper warmbloods, most black, always well-groomed. Not ponies and cobs cheap from Irish dealers with shitstains down their legs and straw in their tails.

The horse trots to Dudley, nostrils wide and trembling. I grab its dangling reins and bring it to my side before they start a fight. Not that I can do enough if they both want to kick the shit out of each other, and Dudley already has his ears pinned back, his teeth showing.

‘Pack it in.’ I smack him on the shoulder.

Cavalry Horse is three hands taller, but Dudley is the bigger troublemaker. I make myself take slow breaths, keep my heels way down and his head up as we ride towards the barracks.

I expect to meet the fallen rider on Rotten Row, looking for his horse. Instead, he’s bent over under a tree.

‘Oi!’ I trot towards him. ‘You alright?’

He has his gloved hands over his nose, and his voice comes out muffled, nasal.

‘Thank goodness, you caught her.’

There’s a trickle of blood down his chin, soaking into his white stock tie.

‘Shit.’ I dig a tissue out of my pocket. It’s covered in bits of hay and wrinkled, but I’m almost sure it is unused and it’s the only one I have on me right now. ‘Here.’

He eyes my outstretched hand.

‘It’s clean.’

He takes it and bunches it under his nose. He is wearing one of those old-fashioned velvet hats that can make anyone look like an idiot, but he’s so classically handsome – even with blood smeared across his face – it’s somehow fitting.

I stop staring when he hobbles closer and takes Cavalry Horse from me. Looks like it’s not only his nose he managed to hurt.

I jump off to help him. ‘I’ll give you a leg up.’ I hook Dudley’s reins around my arm and slide my hands under the man’s shin. ‘For three. One, two—’

Some riders only mount a horse using a mounting block, and it shows. He jumps at the wrong time and I have to haul him up like he’s a bale of hay.

‘Her Majesty is in trouble if the cavalry can’t even count to three.’

‘I’m not in the cavalry,’ he says as I get back onto Dudley. ‘I’m just one of their riders. This was only my second ride for them, actually.’

I have to look up at him and it makes me feel like some sort of Sancho Panza, the way I’m riding a too-small steed. Even my jacket is dirtier than his, though it was him who landed on the ground. He doesn’t seem embarrassed, though. I would be. He should be.

‘Bit of a shit start,’ I say, to help him get there.

He pulls a grimace. ‘More than a bit, considering the A&E waiting times.’

‘A&E, huh? You look more… private practice.’

He narrows his eyes at me. ‘This is the dress code, you know.’

My face burns, and I pull the stinking scarf up to my eyeballs. ‘Bad luck, you ruined half of it.’

‘Indeed.’ Absurdly, he grins. ‘But I saw a stunning black swan on the Serpentine. They are considered lucky in Australia.’

I shiver. ‘That’s not what we say here.’

‘Let me buy you a drink and you can tell me what you say here.’

I raise my eyebrows. ‘A drink?’

‘If the Aussies are right, you should probably accept it.’ He offers a blood-stained smile. ‘When are you free?’

There’s a warning stir inside me, much like the dizziness you feel looking down from a great height.

Like I’m about to fall.