Free Dead Man Riding by Gillian Linscott Page B

are no better than horses?’
    â€˜Wouldn’t dream of it. Most of us aren’t nearly as good. Have you ever seen a human being as much of a real nobleman as my Sid?’
    â€˜I wonder if his mares think so. But I don’t suppose they have much choice in the matter.’
    â€˜They don’t need choice. They’re happy.’
    â€˜Don’t women need choices, then?’
    â€˜No. Doesn’t make them any happier and only causes a lot of trouble and confusion.’
    â€˜So that’s why we don’t need votes, I suppose.’
    â€˜Nobody needs votes. Whatever side you vote for you end up with meddling idiots.’
    â€˜If parliament gives women the vote, perhaps we won’t keep getting idiots elected.’
    â€˜Give? They’ll never just give it to you. If you want anything, you just have to go and take it. If you all wanted it enough, you’d have had it by now.’
    It’s always seemed odd to me that this remark, from an old man I thought was certainly misguided and quite probably mad, turned out to have more influence on the next twenty years of my life than all the sober good sense I’d heard from my friends and teachers. I’d grown up with the idea that because the logical case for giving us the vote had been made over and over again, it was only a matter of time before it would happen. Only it hadn’t happened and it was beginning to dawn on me that something more than asking politely might have to be done about it. So what he’d said stung me more than he deserved. I don’t know what I’d have answered because at that moment a little door through from the cart shed opened. We turned round and there was Dulcie Berryman, more or less conventionally dressed this time in blue serge skirt and jacket and blue cotton blouse. The only odd note was that her feet were in leather Turkish slippers much too big for her. She shuffled towards us.
    â€˜Robin’s asking when you want the wagonette round.’
    â€˜When they’ve had their breakfast. Are they up yet?’
    â€˜Some of them.’
    The Old Man had turned back to look at his picture of the horses, rather wistfully, and she went to stand beside him.
    â€˜There’s nobbut tea and clapbread and butter,’ she said.
    â€˜No eggs?’
    â€˜Nobbut three. The hens are out of kelter.’
    â€˜Clapbread and butter then.’
    There was something curiously intimate about the little conversation, more like two friends than employer to housekeeper. Then I noticed the Old Man’s right hand. Slowly but quite deliberately it was caressing Dulcie’s serge-covered haunch much as he’d stroked the neck of the horse in the meadow. She showed no sign of resenting it any more than the horse had. It was a casual almost automatic gesture, as if he’d done it many times, and yet I was sure it was connected with our discussion. It meant ownership and he meant me to see it. When he turned and looked at me over his shoulder I was quite sure of it. I said something, I don’t know what, and blundered out through the little door, embarrassed and angry, through the cart shed and back to the yard by the house. Then, as luck would have it, the first person I saw was Meredith just when I was feeling at my least intelligent and philosophic.
    â€˜Good morning, Miss Bray. Is anything wrong?’
    He’d been standing in the middle of the yard staring up at the house and looked as fresh and tidy as if he’d just come from his college bathroom, close shaven with a jaunty black felt hat on his head, which he raised to me. There was something ironic in the gesture – conventional manners in a mad situation.
    â€˜No, nothing thank you.’ I was still hot with confusion and embarrassment and didn’t want to talk about it to anybody, least of all him.
    â€˜Did you all sleep well?’
    This was altogether too ironic. ‘No, we didn’t, and I