I was speechless. Then as she turned away to hang up one of Uncle Bruno’s aprons, Aunt Mathilde came out into the garden with a basket of washing under her arm.
“Yannick’s been very kind, Maman,” Amandine said. “He’s done me a drawing. After what happened last night. It’s really good too.”
Aunt Mathilde had put down her washing and was looking at the drawing. “Bruno!” she called. “Bruno, come out here!” And Uncle Bruno appeared, his hands white with flour. “Look at this,” said Aunt Mathilde. “Look what Yannick did, and all by himself too.”
Bruno peered at it closely for a moment, then started to roar with laughter. “I don’t think so,” he said. “Yannick may be a genius with crème brûlée, but this is by Picasso, the great man himself. I promise you. Isn’t it, Yannick?”
So I told them the whole story. When I’d finished, Amandine came over and hugged me. She had tears in her eyes. I was in seventh heaven, and Uncle Bruno waggled his moustache and gave me six crystallised apricots. Unfortunately Aunt Mathilde hugged me too and pinched my cheek especially hard. I was the talk of the inn that night, and felt very proud of myself. But best of all Amandine came on my walk in the hills the next day and climbed trees with me and collected acorns, and held my hand all the way back down the village street, where everyone could see us, even the motor-scooter boys in their blue jeans.
They still have the boat drawing by Picasso hanging in the inn. Amandine runs the place now. It’s as good as ever. She married someone else, as cousins usually do. So did I. I’m a writer still trying to follow in Jean Giono’s footsteps. As for Cézanne, was my mother right? Is he the greatest painter in the world? Or is it Picasso? Who knows? Who cares? They’re both wonderful and I’ve met both of them – if you see what I’m saying.
Some years ago, we got to know Elisabeth Frink, a wonderful sculptor, particularly of horses, and a kind and generous person too. She became a great friend and ally in life. Sadly, she died all too young. Her very last work now hangs above the west door of Liverpool Cathedral. It is a Risen Christ.
The bike was new that Christmas. It was maroon, and I remember it was called a Raleigh Wayfarer. It had all you could ever dream of in a bike – in those days. It had a bell, a dynamo lamp front and rear, five gears and a silver pump. I loved it instantly and spent every hour I could out riding it. And when I wasn’t riding it, I was polishing it.
We lived on the edge of town, so it was easy to ride off down Mill Lane past the estate, along the back of the soap factory where my father worked, and then out into the countryside beyond. How I loved it. In a car, you zoomed past so fast that the cows and the trees were only ever brief, blurred memories. On my bike I was close to everything for the first time. I felt the cold and the rain on my face. I mooed at the cows, and they looked up and blinked at me lazily. I shouted at the crows and watched them lift off cawing and croaking into the wind. But best of all, no one knew where I was – and that included me sometimes. I was always getting myself lost and coming back at dusk, late. I would brace myself for all the sighing and tutting and ticking off that inevitably followed. I bore it all stoically because they didn’t really mean it, and anyway it had all been worth it. I’d had a taste of real freedom and I wanted more of it.
After a while I discovered a circuit that seemed to be just about ideal. It was a two-hour run, not too many hills going up, plenty going down, a winding country lane that criss-crossed a river past narrow cottages where hardly anyone seemed to live, under the shadow of a church where sometimes I stopped and put flowers on the graves that everyone else seemed to have forgotten, and then along the three-barred iron fence where the horses always galloped over to see me, their tails and heads high, their ears pricked.
There were three of them: a massive bay hunter that looked down on me from a great height, a chubby little pony with a face like a chipmunk, and a fine-boned grey that flowed and floated over the ground with such grace and ease that I felt like clapping every time I saw her move. She made me laugh too because she often made rude, farty noises as she came trotting over to see me. I called her Peg after a flying horse called Pegasus that I’d read about in a book. The small one I called Chip, and the great bay, Big Boy. I’d cuddle them all, give each of them a sugar lump – two for Peg because she wasn’t as pushy as the other two – told them my troubles, cuddled them a little more and went on my way, always reluctantly.
I hated to leave them because I was on my way back home after that, back to homework, and the sameness of the house, and my mother’s harassed scurrying and my little brother’s endless tantrums. I lay in my room and dreamed of those horses, of Peg in particular. I pictured myself riding her bareback through flowery meadows, up rutty mountain passes, fording rushing streams where she’d stop to drink. I’d go to sleep at nights lying down on the straw with her, my head resting on her warm belly. But when I woke, her belly was always my pillow, and my father was in the bathroom next door, gargling and spitting into the sink, and there was school to face, again. But after school I’d be off on my bike and that was all that mattered to me. I gave up ballet lessons on Tuesdays. I gave up cello lessons on Fridays. I never missed a single day, no matter what the weather – rain, sleet, hail – I simply rode through it all, living for the moment when Peg would rest her heavy head on my shoulder and I’d hear that sugar lump crunching inside her great grinding jaw.
It was spring. I know that because there were daffodils all along the grass verge by the fence, and there was nowhere to lie my bike down on the ground without squashing them. So I leant it up against the fence and fished in my pocket for the sugar lumps. Chip came scampering over as he always did, and Big Boy wandered lazily up behind him, his tail flicking nonchalantly. But I saw no sign of Peg. When Big Boy had finished his sugar lump, he started chewing at the saddle of my bike and knocked it over. I was just picking it up when I saw her coming across the field towards me. She wore long green boots and a jersey covered in plants and stars, gold against the dark, deep blue of space. But what struck me most was her hair, the wild white curly mop of it, around her face that was somehow both old and young at the same time.
“Who are you?” she asked. It was just a straight question, not a challenge.
“Bonnie,” I replied.
“She’s not here,” said the woman.
“Where is she?”
“It’s the spring grass. I have to keep her inside from now on.”
“Why?”
“Laminitis. She’s fine all through the winter, eats all the grass she likes no trouble. But she’s only got to sniff the spring grass and it comes back. It heats the hoof, makes her lame.” She waved away the two horses and came closer, scrutinising me. “I’ve seen you before, haven’t I? You like horses, don’t you?” I smiled. “Me too,” she went on. “But they’re a lot of work.”
“Work?” I didn’t understand.
“Bring them in, put them out, groom them, pick out their feet, feed them, muck them out. I’m not as young as I was, Bonnie. You don’t want a job do you, in the stables? Be a big help. The grey needs a good long walk every day, and a good mucking