“Orfeo better get used to me, Nialla,” Rafe said when I made to lead the black to the trailer. “Hell, girl, I’ve got a reputation to uphold,” he said in a low hiss that I alone heard.
I couldn’t help thinking of what Bess Tomlinson had said-about his marrying me for the horses-but… that didn’t make any sense, although Rafe had never said he loved me. Not once, despite the ardent moments we had shared. He’d said some pretty exciting things about me being made for love, had insisted on marrying me, but never a word that he loved me.
Orfeo had no such reservations, and followed him as docilely as Phi Bete had gone with Mac. Jerry stood by, shaking his head in disbelief. Just then the fair steward, Budnell, came striding into the yard, the anxious expression on his face changing to plain worry.
“I’d thought you’d left, Miss…”
“Mrs. Clery,” Rafe corrected him.
Budnell paused in pulling an envelope from one pocket and a sheaf of papers from another. Then, he grinned nervously.
“Your prize money, Mrs. Clery, and Haworth says you haven’t signed the release yet.”
“Nor will she,” Rafe told him. “Not until she’s been checked thoroughly by my doctor, and not until we know that the gelding has completely recovered from the fire.
“Now, Mr. Clery,” Budnell began.
“Budnell”-and Rafe’s attitude was of slight exasperation-”I’m no fool, so don’t give me that jazz about the fair is not responsible for accidents and you’re only doing this because at heart you’re a sportsman. You know goddamn well exhibitors have been after you for seven years to condemn G-Barn and build a modern facility. Christ, that barn was put up by the farmers who used to race their mares on the flats.”
“But… but…”
“We’ll be in touch. By the end of next week. Good-bye and thank you!”
Rafe took the envelope and handed it to me, closed:he window of the wagon, ignored Budnell’s continued exhortations, as he gave the tow bar a knowing kick, checked the tires of the trailer and the fastening of the ramp. He got in, and left Budnell standing, mouthing words like a worried clown.
Rafe waved cheerily at all in the barnyard and drove off. We got to the cattle gate before Rafe eased on the brakes, swearing.
“Forgot Pete.” He was out the door and running back to the Austin-Healey, which Jerry was driving home. They conferred briefly, but Rafe was cussing when he got back to the station wagon.
“No one’s seen Pete since yesterday morning. I left tobacco money with Mac, but…” And Rafe shrugged.
“Doesn’t he work for one of the exhibitors?”
Rafe shook his head. “He drifts from show to show in the summer. Used to train harness horses until he was in a bad crash on the Goshen track. Spokes of a sulky -heel caught him in the gut. Someone took him on as a caretaker when he finally got out of the hospital. He wasn’t much good for anything else. He couldn’t stay away from horses, but I suppose it was too much for him to go back to the trotting tracks, so he drifted to the shows. Wish I knew half of what he remembers about horses.”
“Where do you suppose he got to?”
“He’ll turn up,” Rafe assured me. He reached over to pat my leg. “Hey, for chrissake, move over!”
Obediently I slid across the leather seat until our shoulders and thighs touched. He spared me a grin, flexing his hands on the steering wheel, then concentrated on driving.
He was a good driver, even with the erratic tug of the trailer. He kept in the right lane at a steady speed, slowing well in advance of lights and intersections so that there’d be no jerk and bounce for the horses in the trailer. There wasn’t that much traffic on the road on a Tuesday anyhow.
He turned the radio on to a pleasant background level, increasing the volume slightly for the news broadcasts, to which he listened with far more interest than I.
Our wedding luncheon consisted of hamburgers, french fries, and chocolate shakes, eaten at a roadside stand. It was more fun than the most elaborate and appropriate banquet. Rafe was in a high good humor, and everything we said struck us as either funny or bawdy with double meaning. I couldn’t be embarrassed or uneasy with him, although I was very conscious of the rings on my left hand, of my new status, of him. How could brides stand so many people around them, all thinking the same thing, their eyes knowing, staring at you?
Once we’d finished the last of the french fries, we disposed of the paperware, checked the horses, and were on our way-no rice, no leers, no weeping farewells. Shortly after lunch we hit the bigger highways and the concentration of traffic threading into the city of New York. It stayed with us to the approach to Throg’s Neck Bridge (what on earth is a “throg’s neck”?) where traffic thinned out. A few miles due south, and then east on the Long Island Expressway.
This didn’t look like the Long Island I’d heard of, vast estates and potato farms, or desolate dunes and windswept grasses with sailboats prettily hovering in the distance. Developments were smack up against the six lanes of highway, all ticky-tacky, garish, hot, and treeless. Yet Rafe said he had a farm. Was it, too, surrounded by multiple dwellings in serried ranks, identical in design, differing only in the paint of the trim?
If he was aware of my growing apprehension, he gave no sign, but we’d both been silent since we crossed that Throg’s Neck, the radio chattering into the hiatus.
There was some kind of problem that stacked cars down a long hill by a shopping center and up the other side. Traffic inched forward. When we finally reached the other hill crest, cars were stretching out again, with no sign of any impediment.
“Long Island Distressway,” Rafe said, with an understanding grin. “Curvitis. Everyone slows down to take the curve, and it multiplies.” He’d displayed no impatience with what was evidently a common hazard of this particular route.
To my intense relief, the ticky-tacky houses were abruptly left behind. Broad expanses of golf course could be seen through a comforting screen of huge old trees. One or two elegant homes came in view, well back from the highway, in lofty dignity among oaks. When we finally turned off the “distressway,” there were actually crop-growing fields on either side, cultivated dark earth under the new green of healthy plants. Many trees overlapped the road, and it curved and turned like any respectable, little-used farming lane. Massive rhododendrons flanked an imposing gate of wrought iron and brick and here and there a long six-foot-high brick-and-ivy wall blocked off the curiosity of transients. We were obviously in estate territory. Signposts indicated that Syosset was in one direction, Locust Valley in another, and we were entering the village of Upper Brookville. I began to feel easier. There was a familiarity about this countryside, although, to my knowledge, I’d never been on Long Island before.
Mailboxes and signposts (elegant black, with gold lettering) announced homesites. Rafe carefully eased the car and trailer up a narrow blacktopped road, one which ought to bear the legend “hidden entrance,” the turning was so abrupt. A Cyclone gate barred our way, and Cyclone fencing high with twelve inches of barbed wire slanting atop it went off in both directions into the woods.
Rafe pressed a control on the dashboard that I hadn’t noticed before, and the gate clanged open. When we’d driven past it, it shut. “I’m impressed!”
“It sure beats getting wet or cold opening gates.” To the left, the trees gave way suddenly to a view of lawns sweeping up to the front terrace of a mansion in the Spanish style that had been so popular on the East Coast in the early part of the century-red-tiled roofs, creamy-pink stucco, square towers, grilled windows, all that, and probably a fountain in the central courtyard. A handsome wrought-iron gate between two stuccoed pillars led to the low garages behind the house as we swept obliquely away from it, down a narrow wooded road. Then the woods petered out, and we drove past a complex of paddocks, a jump ring, a fenced orchard with gnarled apple and pear trees under which grazed a bay yearling, just beginning to fill out. He came trotting inquisitively up to the fence and followed us as far as he could. Then he flicked up his heels and went back to his grazing.