Sole Possession Read online

  Sole Possession

  Gillian Baxter

  Copyright © 2020 Gillian Baxter

  All rights reserved

  The characters and events portrayed in this book are fictitious. Any similarity to real persons, living or dead, is coincidental and not intended by the author.

  No part of this book may be reproduced, or stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise, without express written permission of the author. The only exception is by a reviewer, who may quote short excerpts in a review.

  Printed in the United Kingdom

  First printing: September 2020

  Contents

  Title Page

  Copyright

  Prologue.

  Chapter one.

  Chapter two.

  Chapter three.

  Chapter four.

  Chapter five.

  Chapter six.

  Chapter seven.

  Chapter eight.

  Chapter nine.

  Chapter ten.

  Chapter eleven.

  Chapter twelve.

  Chapter thirteen.

  Chapter fourteen.

  Chapter fifteen.

  Chapter sixteen.

  Chapter seventeen.

  Chapter eighteen.

  Chapter nineteen.

  Chapter twenty.

  Chapter twenty one

  Chapter twenty two

  Chapter twenty three.

  Preseli Seasons

  Winter.

  Rain in grey columns like tall ghosts walking

  Between the farmlands and the barren hills.

  Grey rocks, grey water, grey skies, grey birds

  Tossed low and crying where the wide marsh fills.

  The past is in the rain, and long years to come

  Veiled and hidden by time

  The wind blows on and the clouds hang low

  And the ghosts drift by in line.

  Spring.

  A light that shines and shimmers and moves

  Over hills that might scarcely be there.

  The sheep are back and the skylarks soar

  Their song shimmers down through the air.

  The ghosts are gone, it’s the fairies turn

  In the magical changing light.

  There are other worlds not a breath away

  Through the mists that touch on the heights.

  Summer

  The streams shrink down and the flickering fish

  Lie low as the herons hunt.

  In the wavering heat the bluestones move

  And the bracken parts in front.

  On midsummer’s night the old gods stir

  As the moonlight silvers the moor.

  The owl flies low and his hunting cry

  Springs open the cromleck’s door.

  Autumn.

  Purple and gold are the moorlands now,

  Brown and purple and gold,

  The streams fill up as the storms roar in

  And the sheep go down to the fold.

  The year turns on with the cooling days,

  The hills are shrunken and old.

  From the ancient rocks the mist rolls down

  And the ghosts come back with the cold.

  Prologue.

  ‘It’s no good, it’ll have to go.’

  The blond woman in the smart designer jacket and black trousers was tapping her feet impatiently.

  ‘I’m not paying for any more vets or your livery fees while my daughter’s in a coma all due to this animal.’

  The animal in question, a once nice-looking bay pony with a breedy head and a white patch on his neck and one on his hind quarters, stood with drooping head in the yard. It had been trace clipped but the clip was growing out now, in March, and it had obviously recently lost weight. There were the scabby remains of old cuts on its legs and its eyes looked dull and withdrawn.

  ‘You mean the knacker?’ Marg, the middle-aged woman holding the rope had a short, no-nonsense haircut and yard clothes. ‘Are you sure? Sylva is so fond of him and Simon reckons she dreams about him.’

  ‘How does he know she dreams about anything?’ The woman looked despairing. ‘She just gabbles away; the hospital say it’s just a reflex. Just get rid of it, I don’t care how, it’s proved dangerous.’

  She turned to walk away to her smart car and Marg sighed. Spotlight had always been difficult with anyone except his owner, withdrawn and different Sylva, who had found him in a sale, neglected and terrified of everything, with scars from vicious treatment on his head and flank. She had persuaded her brother to buy him for her and they had formed a tremendous bond, the frightened pony and the fragile girl, but there was no proof that he was dangerous, no one knew what had happened on the day he had come home alone with cuts on his legs and his rider had been found unconscious in the road. Slip marks had shown that he had bolted and later fallen but there had been no witnesses. The pony had been hard to catch that day, running round the yard and back to the gate almost as if he wanted someone to follow him. It had occurred to her afterwards that it was as though he knew Sylva needed help, but she had decided that it was too imaginative.

  She had done her best for him up to now although the cuts had been slow to heal and it had been hard to keep any condition on him since the accident. If he had been a dog she would have thought that he was pining for his owner but she did not believe that horses formed that strong an attachment for a human. She couldn’t have him put down, though, she decided. That could be the end for odd, withdrawn Sylva if she ever woke up again and found out, and Simon, her twin, would be devastated on her behalf. There must be another way. She would ask around.

  Two weeks later.

  The pony stood just inside the gate. Behind him the latch clattered and grated and footsteps squelched away. A door opened and closed, an engine chugged into life, and the sound of it moved away to the road. There was a great stillness, and a feeling of space, and suddenly, hopefully, he whinnied. There was no reply, and as the dusk thickened he knew that he was quite alone. It felt utterly strange after the small paddocks and enclosed spaces that he was used to with the distant hum of traffic, the company of other horses, and the feel and scent of the human who had

  been his security. Suddenly he was afraid, afraid to move forward into this strange place of

  unfamiliar smells and half-seen shapes where even the grass under his feet smelled strange. He would wait, she would come, she always had before.

  Chapter one.

  Spring was coming, the high moorland of West Wales was still brown but the low sheep fields were turning green and there were green buds on the thorn bushes. There were patches of flaming gold flowers on the gorse and there were tadpoles in the still patches of water beside the track. There was some slight warmth in the sun, and the light was dazzling in the clear, bright air. Patsy stopped her horse at the point where the track turned along the hillside and Goliath was happy to stop, blown after cantering all the way up from the flat land below them. He was a skewbald cob, not Welsh but what was called traditional, stocky and strong and still lively to ride in spite of his eighteen years.

  Patsy was not young herself, sixty five, a bit stiff in the joints but still active. Her hair was still mainly dark with only a touch of grey and there was a youthful look about her. She was English but after five years she felt settled in her life in this fairly sparsely occupied country. She asked Golly to walk on and they followed the track as it turned steeply downhill back towards the sheep fields and the gate back to the road.

  There was a herd of moor ponies lower down, grazing on the emerging patches of green, several with foals beside them, and Golly pricked his ears towards the
m. They were pretty little animals, pure-bred Welsh Mountain ponies owned by a local farmer whose youngsters, with famous blood lines, were in demand by breeders all over the world. Seeing Golly approaching they began to move away and Patsy noticed a stranger, a bigger pony than the Section A’s, a bay with longer legs and a look of breeding in his head. He was thin, his coat rough, and as he began to follow the others the showy and possessive grey stallion ran at him.

  ‘Dumped,’ thought Patsy at once. It happened sometimes with people finding, too late, how much ponies cost to keep and how hard it could be to find buyers for them. Too sentimental to have them put down instead they turned unsuitable animals out to fend for themselves, not realising how hard and sometimes extreme conditions could be out on these wild, rough hills.

  The bay pony swung away from the attack and, seeing Golly, it started hesitantly towards him and Patsy saw that it was lame. She stopped to wait until it was a few strides away, ears pricked, and Golly wickered a greeting. The pony came closer, stretching out its nose, and Golly cheerfully reached his nose to nuzzle it.

  ‘Hello,’ said Patsy. ‘Who are you, I wonder.’

  The pony had been trace-clipped earlier in the year, Patsy could see the line between the rough winter coat and the new growth, but there were scabby old cuts on its legs and it looked thin and poor. There was a small patch of white halfway up its neck leading to a white lock of mane and a small white patch on its quarters but otherwise it looked whole coloured.

  “I’ll have to come back, with Katy and a head collar, and see if we can catch it,” she decided. Katy was her daughter, married to the son of Patsy’s neighbouring farmer. For now all she could do was tell Golly to walk on and head for home.

  The pony followed a few steps behind until Patsy reached the gate off the moor and as she closed it and rode on he called to Golly, who swung his head to listen.

  ‘I’ll be back,’ Patsy told him, wishing that he could understand, but there was no more that she could do for the moment.

  Patsy could see that her daughter was not there as she let herself and Golly in through her gate beside the cattle grid into her yard. Her stone-built traditional farmhouse was in front of her and to the left two the old stone stables had been rebuilt as a cottage for Katy and Gareth and their Land Rover was missing. They would be at Gareth’s family farm next door, helping with setting up pens for the lambing which was just beginning, and Patsy knew that the pony would have to be left for another day. Both Katy and Gareth worked from home most days, both involved in computer work for small offices and homes, but at busy times Gareth helped his parents. He had helped to build some new stables in a barn behind the house for Patsy and now she led Golly down to his box.

  Out in the field Eithin Aur, the Welsh cob mare, whinnied a welcome and her son, Hedfa Aur,

  gave his welcoming stallion scream and came to his gate at his showy, high-stepping cob trot. He was a magnificent animal, supreme cob champion at the Royal Welsh show last year, a shining, big crested chestnut with a flaxen mane and tail, and he was starting to raise interest as a possible sire. Golly shared his field as companion and the two horses got on well together.

  Patsy and Katy had broken his mother in, not without trouble as she had been a largely un-handled four year old before she had her son, and Katy now rode her. She shared her field next to her son with Osbourne, a big oddly marked piebald horse with a white body and black head and mane. Osbourne belonged to an English neighbour of theirs, Mack. He and his wife Tabitha, both a similar age to Patsy, were away on a world cruise, ‘before we get quite into our dotage,’ Mack, who showed no sign of that being soon, had told Patsy. Osbourne was therefore holidaying himself with the Bryn Uchaf horses.

  Patsy missed her rides with Mack, he was cheerful, undemanding company and she would be glad when he returned. He had shown her the safe ways over the rough hills with their bogs and drops and changing weather, they had ridden together for hours and talked about everything under the sun. Mack was the writer of a very successful series of thrillers based on some semi-secret work that he had done, many years ago, in the foreign office and on the royalties of which he had been able to buy a house in his beloved West Wales. Patsy knew that Mack loved the hills but his sharp-tongued wife grew bored, which had led to this cruise.

  Patsy unsaddled Golly and turned him back out with Hedfa Aur and stayed to watch, leaning on the gate, as the two horses moved away to graze. They were quite a contrast, the shining stallion with his crested neck and bold eye and the plainly marked gypsy cob with his hairy legs and solid, big boned frame, but to Patsy they were both irreplaceable.

  ‘They’re great boys, both of them,’ she commented to the sparkling air, but as always now there was no reaction. There had been a time when Patsy thought that she shared Bryn Uchaf with the shade of its previous owner, the prickly, resentful Welsh farmer who had owned Eithin Aur’s sire, Bryn Uchaf Highflyer, but the sense of another presence had now been long gone, although Patsy

  sometimes missed it.

  Her four pet sheep, orphaned and bottle fed lambs who had stayed on, were eyeing her, hopeful of tit bits, until she turned away to tidy the stable leaving the horses to their grass, sweet with the rise of spring. The cats came to meet her, hoping for lunch, and Patsy stroked the tortoise shell mother of the tribe. She had known Emrys when he was alive and never been really afraid of him, or what remained of him, afterwards.

  By the time the jobs were done the morning sun had become veiled as thin cloud drifted into the hills from the sea and Patsy knew that it would rain later. She had eaten a sandwich for lunch and was spending half an hour with a book when she heard Katy and Gareth drive in and Katy called in to report that they were home. She put her head in to greet her mother, her curly blond hair damp already from the first drops of rain, and Patsy told her about the pony.

  ‘I’ll come out with you to check it tomorrow,’ Katy promised. ‘I’ve got a bit of work to catch up on this afternoon.’

  She went away down the yard to the cottage and Patsy checked on Facebook to see if there was any mention of a missing pony. As she had expected there was nothing. If it was a stray someone would have been round checking all the local farms but it had definitely looked more abandoned than straying.

  The wind got up later, making the front door bang as it roared in from the sea, and Katy and Gareth helped to bring in the horses as it promised to be a rough night. Gareth had built the new barn with inside stabling for the horses and there was good shelter from the weather. The moorland ponies would not be bothered, they were used to the wild storms that brought sheaves of rain driving across their hills. They had their sheltering spots among the gorse bushes and in the ravines where the streams ran and they never shed their thick coats until instinct told them that the spring had really come to stay. The bay pony would feel the weather, though, with his half grown out trace-clip and his look of finer breeding. Patsy hoped that he would find shelter with the wild ponies but she doubted if the stallion would let him.

  It was still raining next morning but the wind had dropped a little and Katy said that she would go with Patsy to look for the pony. They saddled up, Golly resigned to the fact that he was about to be asked to face the weather and the mare, whom Katy called ‘Goldie,’ an English version of her Welsh name which meant ‘Golden Gorse’, swinging round restlessly.

  Out in the yard the wind came down from the hills in a stronger gust and the horses turned their tails to it but once their riders were settled they consented to face it and Golly led the way out to the road.

  The gate onto the moor was hard to open, the wind catching it, but Golly helped Patsy to cope and Goldie shot through while she held it. There was a sweep of rain coming towards them in a grey mist and neither horse wanted to face into it.

  ‘We’ll never find him in this,’ Katy shouted, and Patsy said, ‘There’s that gorse thicket in the dip, he could be there.’

  They crossed the intervening stretch of open ground wit
h the horses walking sideways with their heads low and their ears flattened to keep the rain out. They knew from the sudden disturbance among the thick bushes that there were ponies sheltering there, and the grey stallion met them, on guard, his mares behind, but the bay pony was not there. Golly and Goldie were not keen to go back into the wind and Katy shouted against it, ‘we’ll have to leave it,’ and Patsy knew that she was right. The pony could be anywhere on the thousands of acres of open moorland.

  Both their horses were only too glad to make for home but a little later, when they were settled in their sheltered field and she and her daughter were drinking coffee by the Rayburn with the dozing cats, Patsy felt guilty. They could have searched further, she thought, unused to such weather the bay pony would suffer. First thing tomorrow, she vowed, as a gust of the freshly strengthening wind shook the window, she would go out prepared to make a proper search.

  It was very early the next morning when something woke Patsy and the mother cat, also disturbed, thumped off her feet to the ground. There was a faint line of light round the curtain and as she sat up Patsy heard Golly whinny and knew that something had alerted him. She got rather stiffly out of bed and peered out. It was light enough for her to see the brown and white horse at his gate, staring into the distance. Patsy knew that she would have to investigate. Katy would not wake, she usually slept through storms and domestic dramas, and Patsy pulled on jeans and a sweater and went downstairs to let herself out into the still, sweet scented, slightly misty light of early morning.

  There was nothing obvious wrong. The other horses were still asleep, the mare and her son lying down with their legs tucked under them and noses on the ground, Osbourne flat on his side. Only Golly was awake, and he greeted Patsy with a soft nicker.

  ‘What is it?’ Patsy asked her old horse and Golly snorted and nudged her. He was staring away again towards the hills and now Patsy heard it herself, a faint whinny, just a whisper in the still air. Not the moor ponies, she decided, they only called to each other before joining up again.